


The House on Graymalkin Lane

by Amiril



Series: Amiril Fic (Not Cover Art) [7]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: DOFP adjacent, F/F, Flashbacks, Haunted House, High School, M/M, Old mutants in love, Or Is It?, POV Charles Xavier, POV Erik Lehnsherr, POV Outsider, Post-X3, Temporary Character Death, Written before Dark Phoenix came out so RIP to that movie but Mystique is alive, XMFC compliant, be gay do crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 91,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiril/pseuds/Amiril
Summary: When two teenagers (one mutant, one human) go exploring an abandoned mansion, they're expecting peeling paint and spooky rooms. Instead, they find ghosts, and memories, and evidence of a haven for mutants long since abandoned.As political tensions rise, and local mutants disappear, they start looking to it for answers. Where are the X-Men? Who was Charles Xavier?And what was he hiding, in the house on Graymalkin Lane?
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, OFC/OFC
Series: Amiril Fic (Not Cover Art) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/827448
Comments: 73
Kudos: 120





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> *pops into the fandom four years late with ghosts* 
> 
> I wrote most of this last fall, before Dark Phoenix came out. So, it disregards that. Technically it's set post-X3, and the events of the original trilogy happened as we saw them, and then I help myself to whatever part of the alternate timeline movies I like. Because that's exactly what the writers of the movies are doing as well.

Charles hadn’t heard them coming. 

At any other point in his life, it would have been easy. Nearly a hundred minds, intent on his school, his house, on his friends and children. But now, they only come into focus when they reach the gates, and it’s going to be too late, too late— 

He sends out a warning to the others. Storm and Logan are up instantly— oh, Logan never went to sleep: Charles catches a glimpse of the television before moving on, looking for the rest of the X-Men. But there is no rest of the X-Men. Just Kitty, Marie, Bobby and Warren and it’s so hard not to think of them as children— it’s hard to think at all, because there are so many minds and all they want is—

 _GET THE STUDENTS OUT,_ he projects, with none of his usual finesse. _TUNNELS, CARS, RUN—_

The door to his room opens and for a moment he expects guns, but it’s Storm. In her pajamas, with lightning dancing around her fingertips. “Come on.”

Charles hasn’t even left his bed. “The children.”

“We’re working on it. Logan and I will hold them off—”

 _NO._ He doesn’t know if he says it aloud. “There’s too many, they’ll capture him, Logan needs to protect—” protect the children, Raven and Alex and Darwin and Sean and Angel— no, they’re all long gone and never children— Charles needs to _keep it together_ —

“Hey. Hey. Professor.” Storm grabs his hand. Shocks him a little, but she doesn’t mean to. “Keep it together, okay?” _Keep it together._ That was her thought, not his.

“I need Cerebro.”

“You’re not strong enough yet.”

He’s not. He’s only six months un-dissolved, and he’s been trying to straighten out his mind. Trying to get anywhere near where he was when Jean— little Jeanie Grey— tore him apart. But he doesn’t have time anymore.

He and Erik will protect the children.

No— 

Erik can barely lift a bucket these days, and anyway, he’s… he’s somewhere else.

“We don’t have any other options.” He thinks he sounds calm when he says it. “I’ll go to Cerebro and slow them down, and then I’ll follow you. Don’t worry. They won’t be able to reach me down there.” They’ll be able to reach him everywhere, he will _be_ everywhere, but he will be able to get them too and that’s what matters right now.

Storm hesitates. But she’s practical, and she knows what’s important. Maybe that’s why she’s the only one left.

“Be careful,” she says. “We only just got you back.”

But she leaves, and after a moment, so does he— swings into his wheelchair with half his mind on the task and the rest of it moving up the driveway, past hands on guns, all those minds blurring together into an average of intent. Kitty runs past Charles in the hallway, dragging five students behind her. Clinging to each other’s hands, they disappear through the wall, and they’ll need time, time—

The elevator dings.

Charles rolls inside, steering his chair over the bump in the floor. It would be like any of the thousands of times he’s done this, but for the thoughts approaching— and he catches a face in them— Erik, they had a tip that Erik would be here, but Erik isn’t here and they know that’s probably the case, they’re just using him as a cover, been after an excuse since they heard of Charles’s death, they’re not going to stop and they’re not going to stop and Charles wants to reach out and steer them away but he doesn’t trust himself to do it like this, not without them noticing, coming back with more firepower, he needs— he needs—

He needs help, and when he leaves the elevator he’s faced with Cerebro’s doors. It’s been so long since he was down here. Every time he’d thought of it, he’d see that bastardized one that Erik left him in— so he'd stayed away, and he’s paying the price for that now—

_How does it look from there, Charles? Still fighting the good fight?_

He hasn’t been, but now he has to go and stop them, because they’re getting closer. Surrounding the house, watching for a sign that they’ve been spotted, searching for the use of mutant powers, thinking it’s so much easier now that the telepath is gone.

 _From here, it doesn't_ _look like they’re playing by your rules. Maybe it’s time to play by theirs._

“Welcome, Professor.” 

Has Cerebro always looked like something waiting to eat him alive?

One of his wheels is squeaking. He hadn’t noticed until now, but it seems very loud. Despite all the minds around him, it’s always quiet in here.

His hands shake as he picks up the helmet. Age? Fear? _Keep it together,_ Ororo’s voice says, and he focuses on that. Imagines her here next to him. _Keep it together, keep it together—_

The helmet settles over his head, and the world spins out in front of him.

The operatives are nearly at the house, a tangle of _what can they do_ and _I can_ _’t wait to go home_ and _don_ _’t trust the mutants_ and Charles brushes past Marie thinking _I can_ _’t help I should help_ and Ororo thinking _run run worry anger blow them away_ and on Graymalkin there’s a local human family coming back from a trip to the city with faint echo of the _Swan Lake_ theme in their heads— and past them all, in Washington, a room full of men watching the house on monitors, senior officials thinking of plans and logistics and needing to pee, and miles and miles away a jolt of alarm and _is that you, Charles? What_ _’s happening?_ But Erik is too far to help, even if he could, so Charles pulls back and looks at his own front door though the minds of a dozen men with guns and he hears Erik’s voice again, but it’s only a memory—

_There’s been a change in plan._

_There_ _’s been a change in plan,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t have it, that surety of purpose, he’s not a fine scalpel anymore, so he reaches out, past them, minds and memories all melding together—

 _Maybe it_ ’ _s time to play by theirs—_

* * *

A few hours later, Cerebro powers down of its own accord.

The room is empty. 

* * *


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It was a school or something,” Lia’s mother told her, the one time she thought to ask. “Been empty for a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been to Salem Center. I looked at the Google maps of Salem Center (Graymalkin Lane is real, fun fact,) and then kept or disregarded things as I wanted them.

No one in Salem Center ever thinks much about the empty house on Graymalkin Lane.

The gate that would have once announced its presence is covered in vines, turning a grand entrance into a soft ending. The wall around the property rises just high enough to prevent anyone from glancing to the other side, but not high enough to inspire curiosity. The roof of house itself can only be seen if one stands across the street, in the garden of the high school social studies teacher, and squints into the distance.

It’s the type of local landmark that would only be noticed in the case of its demolition: the loss would be a sign of the changing of times, a reference to tell longtime residents from newcomers— even if no longtime resident would ever quite remember what the house looked like.

“It was a school or something,” Lia’s mother told her, the one time she thought to ask. “Been empty for a while.”

Lia hadn’t thought more of it until now. Now, when it’s dark and cold and her best friend is carrying a backpack full of toilet paper they’re too chicken to use.

“We should do _something,_ _”_ she says, because they’re too old for trick-or-treating, too young to ignore Halloween entirely, and not popular enough to get invited anywhere. Toilet papering Mrs. Crown’s house had seemed exciting and daring when they were walking over— but somewhere between Delancey Road and Graymalkin Lane, it had started seeming less cool and more pathetic. It’s not as if it’s an original prank, and it’s not as though they’d be able to claim credit for it after the fact.

Children have left sharp trails of excitement up and down the streets, but no one had approached Mrs. Crown’s. The porch light was off, and Lia could just make out a trail of something glum by the door.

So they’d started looking for alternatives.

Ashe tucks her hands into her armpits. “We could go dump it all on MRO Bill’s porch.”

“What if he catches us?” Lia isn’t sure if Mutant Resource Officers have power outside of school, but she certainly doesn’t want him looking at her.

“Well, let’s not stay here. Standing around in the cold is giving me a headache.”

Lia looks past her, at the gate that’s nearly buried in ivy. “We could go explore the old school up there.”

“The school?”

She points. “Yeah. Or house, or whatever it is. Still Halloween-y. Could be haunted.”

“If it’s haunted,” Ashe says, “then isn’t Halloween the last night we want to go exploring it? I’ve seen horror movies.”

“Well how would the ghosts know it’s Halloween? Are they keeping a calendar? Do they count leap years?”

“As long as we’re not standing here.” Ashe gives Graymalkin Lane one last look— and Lia can’t see her face, but there’s discomfort in her footprints when she takes the last few steps back towards the gate, pulling at the vines.

They come away easily. The gates wiggle like they aren’t locked, but the hinges are almost completely rusted over. Maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth— but if Lia goes home, she’s just going to see how her mother’s sadness has soaked into the house. The faint traces of Grandma Hanna’s exhaustion still present on her favorite chair. And, considering how she’d stormed out before— well. At best, her dad would want her to go back to practicing Polish.

“I’m too old, I’d speak it with an accent, and nobody knows Polish anyway!” she’d shouted at him. She doesn’t need it. She already speaks German and Hebrew—well, okay, she can _understand_ German, and she can say the Shema and say hello in Hebrew, but that’s still more than the average American teenager, and she feels like she deserves credit for it.

“Loads of people speak Polish,” he’d shouted back, “and it’s important to your mother!” 

Lots of things are important to her mother these days. Traditions she’d never practiced, things she’d never bothered to teach her children— all of which, Lia thinks, would have mattered a whole lot more when Grandma Hanna was alive.

But she’s not.

So Lia’s not going home. Not yet, anyway. It’s Halloween, and the least they can do is let her go out on Halloween.

“Look at this.” Ashe holds some vines back, showing a spot in the fence where the bars are bent, creating a gap big enough to let them squeeze through. Ashe shoves the backpack in first before climbing after it, and Lia follows her, trying not to touch the ivy in case it’s poison.

She doesn’t think it is, but one can never be too careful.

“There better not be a whole court of sleeping nobles and staff in there,” Ashe says.

There might as well be. The moonlight seems brighter on this side of the wall, and the driveway is clearly visible. So is the fountain, and behind it, the house. It must have been reclaimed by nature as the gate had been, but it’s hard to tell in the dark what is plant and what is stone.

“It’s not like it’s been empty for a hundred years.” Lia isn’t sure how long it’s been abandoned, but if her mom sort of remembers it, then it can’t be more than a couple decades at most. “Not long enough to be really spooky.”

It sure feels spooky, though.

As they walk, Ashe turns on her phone flashlight, sweeping it across the driveway. “Do you see anything here?”

It’s cracked cement, with a few optimistic plants trying to creep their way though. Lia frowns. “Dirt?”

“No, like, do you _see_ anything.”

She squints, but it’s not like it’s going to help. The streets in town are so layered with footprints and feelings that they’re whatever the emotional equivalent of muddy brown is, mixed together until nothing is visible. But here, there’s nothing.

They’re the first visitors in a very long time.

“All I can see is us,” Lia says. “Do you want to go back?” According to her phone, it’s barely even six, though it feels later in the dark. She doesn’t have any coverage, which is odd— they’re only about thirty feet from the road. But when T-Mobile says they cover ninety percent of New York State, they apparently don’t include the end of Graymalkin Lane.

Ashe kicks her toe into the offending ground. “No, no, it’s fine. I don’t know.” But she marches to the front door, tension in every footprint she leaves behind.

 _I don_ _’t want to do this if it’s not going to be fun,_ Lia wants to say, but they’re already here. She doubts any of the doors are even unlocked, but it seems stupid not to try just in case.

The handle to the front door sticks out from a mass of ivy: it’s the fancy kind, where you press down on the top and push—

It opens.

“Maybe someone broke the lock,” Ashe says. “Even if nobody's been here for years, doesn’t mean we’re the first explorers.”

 _Explorers._ It’s a nice way to say _trespassers._

Phones held high, they step inside.

The entryway is large and open, with a ceiling higher than their lights can reach. To their right is a hallway, lined with vases and what look like landscape paintings. A dozen ads about mesothelioma come back to haunt her in that moment, and Lia pulls her shirt up over her nose.

“This must have been a really fancy school,” Ashe says, shining her light along the hallway’s wood paneling. The air is thick with dust and cobwebs, and the paint at the top is cracked. “Like Hogwarts, or something. Ooh, look here.” The first room off the hall looks like… well, in any normal house Lia would say it was the living room, but something about it says _parlor._ Couches and carved paneling, dusty curtains and—

“Holy shit, this is just a plate of pinecones.” One of them skitters across the table when Ashe flicks it, and Lia jumps.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Wooo,” Ashe says, waving one of them in the air. “I am a haunted pinecone!”

“I know you’re a little freaked.” Lia crosses her arms, glad Ashe can’t see the spiky fear she’s leaving in her armpits.

“I’m not _freaked._ But it’s weird, right? It seems like they’d take their paintings and pinecones when they moved.”

Lia thinks there might be old traces of worry and grief on the sofas, but she isn’t certain. She’s not so good at this yet that she can get a good sense of feelings that old.

“Let’s check another room.”

The next door down is a bedroom. Unlike the parlor, it’s in disarray: clothes are falling out of a closet, and the bed isn’t made. Lia pulls her shirt higher over her nose, tucking the collar in around her ears, because she understands now why bedrooms and houses have to be aired out.

A poster is barely hanging onto the wall, its top curled over in defeat. It nearly breaks apart when Ashe tries to shove it back up.

“Cheetah Girls.”

The books by the bed are mostly schoolbooks— _European History,_ a copy of _The Tempest_ with a bookmark halfway through, and a spiral bound volume labeled _Mutant Biology Grade 11._

A thrill of excitement goes through her. 

“Mutants,” Lia says, pulling it out and opening it to a random page. Most of the words on it might as well have been in Polish, but the bottom of the page says the chapter is called _Psionic Mutations._ She tucks the book under her arm.

The next one in the stack is called _Mutant History, Grade 11._

“You think a mutant lived here?”

“Must have. Look.” Ashe waves her over to the dresser, where a series of picture frames have been clumsily arranged. She’s rubbed the dust off of one of them with her sleeve, because she’s a reckless fool who hasn’t covered her nose.

The photo is of a boy, maybe a few years older than they are now— it’s hard to tell, exactly, on account of how he’s made of metal. He’s got one arm around a boy with wings, and another around a girl with purple hair. All three are grinning at the camera.

Lia's never seen three mutants in one place before.

What happened to them?

She looks harder for any trace of a feeling, but whatever might have been there is overpowered by what she and Ashe tracked through it.

The next room has a trace of panic by the bed, and a copy of _Mutant Studies, Grade 9._ It’s even more of a disaster than the first— all the dresser drawers are open, and there are gaps on the shelves. Maybe whoever lived in this one tried to pack.

“Maybe it really _was_ Hogwarts,” Ashe says, flipping through _Mutant Studies._ “Mutants and the Holocaust, Mutants and the Cuban Missile Crisis… which one was the missile crisis?”

“Dunno.” They don’t do American history until tenth grade.

“Mutants in Ancient History…”

They’d never covered mutant history in school. All Lia knows is what she sees online, or, more commonly, what Ashe sees online: X-Men, Brotherhood, Purifiers, decommissioned Sentinel robots, and the Sentinel Services department. Wars and fights and political recognition and even though she knows it’s horrible, it always felt so far away. There’d been a kid in Ashe’s sister’s grade, Shawn, who could shoot fireballs out of his hands. He’d nearly burned down part of their school, and then he’d disappeared. Was he taken to a place like this?

Or somewhere else?

His parents wouldn’t have let them send him somewhere awful, Lia is sure. But he could have hurt people. _Lia_ can’t. It’s not as though she’s even a telepath, capable of learning peoples’ secrets.

She’s not sure exactly what to call herself. Maybe they’d have known, here. Maybe there was someone here with the same power. Maybe, somewhere out there, there still is.

Something creaks.

Lia freezes. “Did you hear that?”

“Probably just the house settling.” Ashe creeps over to the hallway, looking carefully in both directions like she's a child about to cross the street. “There’s no one out there.”

They’re not supposed to be here. Maybe the police are going to come. Maybe the house is about to fall down on top of them, angry at them for disturbing it. There still isn’t any cell reception, and any of their parents could be freaking out right now—

“Right. Probably no one.” Still, she covers her phone light with her palm.

It makes the edges of her fingers glow, and the shadows warp on the wall. For a moment she can believe that they’re sentient, that the darkness is coming from them, that—

“New students?”

It’s a man’s voice, gruff, and Lia could swear she saw a flash of blue, and something grabs her arm and she yelps but it’s Ashe, it’s only Ashe, and there’s the blue again and… it’s a man, or something man-shaped, blue and furry and peering at them—

Ashe shrieks, or maybe Lia shrieks, or they’re both screaming, they’re definitely both screaming, and he’s gone. There’s nothing in front of them but the open doorway and the dusty vase across the hall.

“Oh my god oh my god you saw him too right _Jesus fucking Christ on a fucking crumpet holy shit—_ ”

Lia thinks she’d echo Ashe’s sentiment if she were capable of speaking, but she can’t do anything but run, dropping the book and dragging Ashe out of the bedroom towards the front door, not looking to see if anything is following them because she doesn’t want to know the answer. For a second she worries the door will have locked behind them and they’ll be trapped here forever but it gives when she flings herself against the panic bar and they stumble out onto the stoop and down the drive, frozen grass crunching under their feet. The drive seems much longer than it had going in, and they nearly crash into the gate when they reach it.

“You saw it, right,” Ashe is saying, “did you _see that too_ or am I going crazy—”

“I saw that.” Behind them, the house still looks the same, save for the trails of adrenaline and panic they left behind them. “Was it a ghost? Is this place actually haunted?”

“There’s a ghost, we saw a ghost, _holy shit._ _”_

If they’d been killed by a ghost, Lia’s mom would have brought her back to life in order to kill them again.

Around them, everything is still.

* * *

Last night, Ellie Mclean had gone to a wild party, the likes of which could only be dreamed of by the rest of the freshman class. Dennis Roy had knocked over an outhouse on the football field. Marissa Brian had dressed up as a mutant and tried (and failed) to lead the police on a merry chase. Alison Johnson ate so much candy she still has a food baby. 

Asheleigh Grant presses her lips together, stares at her worksheet, and thinks, _how would they react if I told them I_ _’d seen a ghost?_

It had felt like a dream, when she first woke up this morning. A haunted mansion, Lia’s hand warm against hers, a figure in the darkness. Mysterious books, currently shoved into her backpack because she’d been afraid of leaving them at home— and now she isn’t sure what she was thinking, because if MRO Bill caught wind of them, she’d be in so much trouble. She can’t tell him about Graymalkin house. They wouldn’t believe her about the ghost.

In daylight, from the relative safety of Mrs. Crown’s first period social studies class, the idea of a haunted mansion seems absurd. Ghosts— whatever she’d convinced herself of in the moment— don’t exist.

But mutants do.

Mutants with all kinds of powers. Teleportation, obviously. Maybe even projection of some sort.

Or perhaps plain old hallucination. She’d had a growing headache from the moment they’d stopped at the end of Graymalkin Lane, although that wouldn’t account for Lia seeing it as well.

Perhaps the answer is in _Mutant Studies Grade Nine._

She’d only had time to glance at it that morning. It’s not a proper book, really: it’s printer pages between cardstock covers, bound by a plastic spiral. The previous owner had made doodles in the margins: next to a page about the Brotherhood is written, in skinny print, _Magneto_ _’s costume looks ridiculous, and I don’t understand how it doesn’t stifle recruitment.” —_ Prof X, 2005. And then, in a different hand, _I think he heard you._ There’d also been a stick figure with what looked like cat ears and a giant cigar, and a woman sitting on a cloud with _Make it rain!_ written in a speech bubble.

Teachers, probably. Who else do you doodle in class?

“So what did you do last night?” Ellie asks, and it takes Ashe a moment to realize that she’s the one being spoken to. It’s probably a trap. At the very least, it’s an excuse for Ellie to continue talking about how only seniors throw good parties— or was it college students? Ashe hasn’t been keeping track. She and Ellie haven’t really been friends since the first grade.

Still, she wishes she could say something like _we toilet papered Mrs. Crown_ _’s house._ Even _we explored the old Graymalkin house_ would have been something, but now it’s a capital-M-Mystery. It’s something that belongs to her and Lia, and she doesn’t want Ellie sticking her nose into it. Assuming Ellie would care.

“Not much,” she says, trying to look like she’s above such things as Halloween. “Lia and I just knocked around town a bit.”

The others shrug and move on, and Ashe looks back to her worksheet. 

If anyone finds the books on her, they’re going to ask questions. Call her parents. Her mom might assume Ashe is hiding a mutation of her own, and that… would not go well. She’d stopped Ashe from playing mutant powers as a kid, saying “it’s like playing gay, or cripple,” in the same tone of voice she uses to refer to tattoos or dyed hair.

Ashe, all of seven, had asked what _gay_ meant, frowned through the stuttered explanation that followed, and never brought it up to her mother again. But she’d still secretly wished to be a mutant.

They have ways to test for that, don’t they? She’d be able to prove she isn’t one. But then people might start to wonder about Lia, and Lia doesn’t have powers that could protect her. Even Shawn’s powers didn’t protect him.

Powers didn’t protect whatever ninth grader drew those pictures.

“I hope,” Mrs. Crown says, voice pitched to carry, “that you’re all thinking more about the branches of government than you are about whatever nuisances you made of yourselves last night.”

It takes a moment for the room to go quiet.

“Who wants to list three powers of the legislative branch? Dennis?”

Dennis scratches his armpit. “Legislating?”

Muffled laughter, but their teacher doesn’t smile. “They enact legislation, yes. Another one? Asheleigh?”

“Declaring war,” Ashe mumbles. Mrs. Crown writes both things on the board, half scowling the whole time. She’s the type of teacher who seems to hate the idea of retirement only slightly more than she hates her job. In her long career at North Salem High School, she has managed to make herself both completely loathed and utterly indispensable. _Match the Crown quote to the victim_ is said to be a game at the ten, twenty and thirty year reunions. She also has near-perfect recall of every event since World War Two, and seems to know more about Congress than the people in the House of Representatives. Come to think of it, that might be why she looks like she wants to have the power to declare war against all freshman who barely did the reading. Scuttlebutt says that the PTA tried to get her to retire a couple years back, and every year since she has somehow managed to frighten all her AP Gov students into outperforming almost the entire country. Reducing students to tears is alright, apparently, as long as they pass their AP test.

 _There_ _’s stress just baked into the desks here,_ Lia had told her— when was it. A few weeks ago? It’s only been six weeks since Lia got powers. Since Lia’s grandma had tried to fistfight Lia, Lia’s mom, and two nurses, convinced they were Nazis come to take her away.

“I could see her fear.” Lia had been in the corner of Ashe’s room when she said it, hands and legs twined like she was trying to become some sort of mutant pretzel. “She left it all over my arms, and—” there had been a bruise where Grandma Hanna had gone for the throat. “She didn’t mean it. She must have been so upset— but UTIs, they make old people crazy, that’s what the nurse said. And the funeral’s tomorrow and then everyone’s going to make visits to our house and leave their sadness _all over the fucking place._ ”

Ashe had wanted to curl up around her and never let go. And she’d wondered if Lia could see that now, too. “Do you feel it?” she’d asked. “What other people feel?”

Lia shook her head. “I just see it. I mean, seeing people sad can make me sad, but it’s more like… like hearing a song. But it’s not a song, and it’s not a color, it’s a…” she’d taken her arm out from behind her knee in order to gesture. “It’s not a light, but I can see it in the dark. It just _is._ ”

After the proper period of mourning, Ashe had wanted to calculate everything. If she went for a walk around the house, would Lia be able to recreate her route? How long did the trail last? If someone was feeling a mix of things at once, could Lia separate those? Would she leave footprints if she wore socks? Shoes? When someone was depressed, would they leave sadness behind, or nothing at all?

She hadn’t said anything at the time. But later, they’d started to experiment. Lia can follow her around an empty house, but gets muddled in town unless someone is feeling particularly strongly. Mixed emotions are hard, but Lia thinks she’ll be able to untangle them them after a lot of practice.

Ashe probably has until then to enjoy this friendship as it is. After that—

Well, if she didn’t abandon Lia for being a mutant, it’d be rude for Lia to abandon her for being whatever she is. Gay? Mostly gay? Ashe doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter right now—right now, they have ghosts to deal with. But Ashe is a reasonable girl raised on a healthy diet of _Scooby Doo,_ where the answer to the mystery was always ‘clever disguises’ or ‘heretofore unmentioned mutant powers.’ Given that they’re looking at a mutant school, the second seems likely. And even if it weren’t— humanity is mutating at an unprecedented rate, after all.

Buzzfeed runs articles like _Gen Z has the most mutants,_ Infowars runs headlines like _this generation is the least human, least white, (and the most gay),_ and everyone seems ready to tear each other apart.

Ashe lists the branches of government while Mutant Resource Officer Bill patrols the hallway, looking for anything resembling mutant activity. He’s almost, but not quite, a joke: what he is supposed to _do_ in the face of a threat is unclear. He carries a tranquilizer gun, but according to the internet, those can cause lasting damage. And the rules of mutant engagement are vague: what if a mutant is using their powers harmlessly? Or is there any such thing as harmless powers?

“More guards with weapons have never done anyone any good,” Lia’s grandma had said, and she would know: Hanna had always kept a go-bag, ready with passports and money.

Ashe’s mom had been of a different opinion. “Shawn could have seriously hurt someone. It's not his fault, but they say mutants don't always have control. We have to have someone there who can protect both the kid and his classmates.”

“An MRO wouldn’t have stopped Shawn,” Ashe had said. She hadn’t been there, but she’d heard the story twenty times over at that point. “Not unless he’d been standing right next to him, and shooting him full of drugs could have fucked him up.”

_“Language!”_

“And most mutants are in more danger from humans than the other way around!”

“And you’re an expert now, are you? Because, what, you read what people say on twitter?”

The conversation had gone downhill from there.

So Ashe isn’t about to tell her parents about a mutant school, or potential mutant ghosts. It’s got to stay between her and Lia, and they won't be able to talk until lunch.

The cafeteria is too small to fit all the students, so they spill out into hallways and classrooms. Ashe and Lia eat in the back of Mrs. Crown’s room.

It has two things in its favor. The first is that nobody else ever wants to eat in here, so they’re unlikely to be disturbed. The second is that Mrs. Crown has a famous feud with MRO Bill. “When you are around, my students are distracted imagining their classmates bursting into flames, when I want them focusing on the rule of law,” she had famously told him a couple years back. He has avoided her room ever since. 

The thing not in its favor is the presence of Mrs. Crown herself, but she sits at the front of the room, typing loudly on her computer, while Lia and Ashe talk in the back.

“Did you bring it?” Lia asks, and Ashe finally pulls the book out of her backpack, a few worksheets on hand to pull over the pages if she has to. She drags an adjoining desk closer, balancing her laptop on it.

Lia flips through it, lingering on the one with the note about Magneto. “The Xavier Institute.”

When Ashe googles it, she gets something called ‘The Xavier Institute of Management’ in a place called Bhubaneswar, and the Xavier Institute of Communications in Mumbai.

A search for ‘Xavier + mutant’ brings up pictures of a bald man in a wheelchair with a lot of scientific titles.

“These are worksheets,” Lia says. “Look. There’s discussion questions— _how could Throckmorton have channeled his powers? Should Lisa tell someone what Brian was thinking?_ _”_

Under one question, someone has written _FUCK DA POLICE._

“Hogwarts for mutants,” Ashe mutters, skimming the Google results. “Here’s Charles Xavier, prominent mutant biologist… Charles Xavier, advocate for mutant rights…”

Every webpage has the sharp-cornered flat layout of the early to mid-oughts. The news tab doesn’t give her anything more recent than 2003, when he’d spoken at some news conference or another.

Charles Xavier + mutant + school doesn’t provide anything conclusive, though a couple blogs posit that Charles Xavier and/or George Soros are funding the X-Men. There’s a little bit of speculation about the team's disappearance. Filtering news articles by date doesn’t bring anything more recent than a fight on Alcatraz.

She clicks the next link, and does a double take. “Look at this. ‘Charles Xavier, pictured with UN Secretary Hank McCoy—’ that’s him, isn’t it?” Mrs. Crown’s typing has paused, and Ashe lowers her voice. “Look!” The man next to Charles Xavier is covered in blue fur. She’d only seen a glimpse of his face, but it’s not something that Ashe can forget.

Lia leans closer. “Is he dead?” she whispers.

A search for Hank McCoy + mutant doesn’t show anything after he left office in 2008. “But it doesn’t _say_ he’s dead. Someone would probably have noticed.”

“He must be, though. We saw his ghost.”

“Or it was something else.”

“It was a _ghost,_ ” Lia insists, and Ashe doesn’t push it. It’s not like she knows any better anyway. 

Some reddit links look promising, but they’ve been blocked by the school’s internet filter.

“I’ll look at them when I get home,” Ashe says. “You want to come with, work on algebra at the same time?”

“Can’t. I have Polish. Saturday?”

“Sure.” 

The bell rings, and Ashe stashes the books back in her bag. It isn’t until they’ve already left— Lia for bio and Ashe for algebra— that it occurs to her that she should have asked if Lia wanted to take them.

* * *

When Ashe’s older sister Brook turned sixteen, her parents got her a car, with the condition that she had to drive Ashe around when possible. Brook proceeded to then get out of this duty as much as she possibly could. But for their one year of high school overlap, Brook drives Ashe home every day. And since Lia lives on their way, she usually drives Lia as well. 

Brook complains about it sometimes, but Lia thinks she might just be doing that just to get future favors. Ashe and Brook don’t fight that much, and she seems to like Lia fine. But her presence means that means they have to try and communicate through Significant Looks.

“Offer stands if you want to ditch Polish,” Ashe says, nodding to her backpack, and Lia makes a face.

“I wish. We on for Saturday?” 

This last year has been the first time in Lia’s life that she’s had a best friend who wanted to be around Lia as much as Lia wanted to be around them. Despite living half a mile from each other, they’d only really started talking when they were put in the same homeroom in the eighth grade. Settling in like she’d been there all along.

Lia can’t imagine getting through the last few months without someone to talk to about it.

And now they have another secret.

Nothing bonds like a secret.

“Saturday,” she agrees, sliding out of Brook’s car and slinging her backpack over her shoulder. It catches on her locket chain, and she has to take a moment to detangle so she doesn’t strangle herself via poor jewelry placement. “Thanks, Brook.”

There are only two trails out of the house: one is Lia’s (still excited, still high on last night’s adventures) and the other is almost aggressively neutral. It leads to the edge of the curb, to where her mom’s car is missing. So she’s out, and her dad hasn’t left the house all day. Must be meeting day.

Lia is careful not to touch the keyhole when she unlocks the door. Last time she did that, it took almost three days before she was able to see it again.

Once inside, she drops her backpack on the living room floor before going into the kitchen. She wasn’t lying to Ashe: she does have Polish. But first, she has to lock herself in her room and try something stupid. And before _that,_ she has to eat— but there are sad fingerprints left all over the box with the leftover pie.

At what point should Lia be worried about her mom staying up at night and stress eating? Is that normal?

She doesn’t know how to handle this.

Since she’s not supposed to know it’s happening, it’s not as though she has to do anything at all. They’re all on the edge of a breakdown and all she has to do is pretend she can’t see it. And since emotions don’t have taste— at least, not a taste she can detect— she can close her eyes she can pretend it’s three months ago and the pizza she finds just looks like pizza. She doesn’t bother to heat it up, bringing it to the table cold.

The table empty but for a neat stack of A4 printouts of her grades. A few Ds, Fs, and missing assignments are highlighted for each class, though she isn’t always sure which is which because hopelessness and disappointment is so thick over the letters. Her mother’s, she thinks. It’s got that edge to it. But her mom isn’t here to yell at, so Lia gathers the papers and storms into her father’s study.

“Really?” she asks, brandishing them at him. _“Really?”_

“One minute, guys,” he says, first in English and then in German, before taking off a headset and half folding his laptop. The study is small enough that when he spins his chair around, his shoulder hits the opposite wall. “Your mother and I are concerned.”

“Maybe I don’t have the intellectual capacity to do high school and Polish lessons at the same time.”

“Nice try. I’ve emailed your teachers to ask about extra credit assignments for you to do.”

“And _more_ work is going to help? It’s only the first quarter.”

“We can discuss it tonight,” he says, and Lia wants to throw the printouts in his face, but she also doesn’t want to have her phone taken away, so she contents herself by slamming the door and thinking that it’s not _fair._ She’d only just started high school when Grandma Hanna died, and whenever Ellie hands out the test she leaves so much stress on the pages that sometimes Lia has trouble reading the questions. But she can’t tell her parents that. She can think the words, she can open her mouth to say them, but they refuse to come out.

Her parents were badly shaken by The Shawn Incident. They always worry over mutants in the news. Knowing the truth would upset them— and they have enough to be upset about right now. At best, they wouldn’t understand. At worse, they’d take her to a doctor. And even though she knows they’d never turn her into Sentinel Services willingly, they might not have a choice.

She can’t stop thinking about those empty bedrooms. The mutants who lived there disappeared without packing, and Shawn... 

Shawn was escorted out of school and he never came back.

Grandma Hanna might have understood. But Lia can’t talk to her. Unless—

She makes it to her room before she lets herself think it.

_Ghosts are real._

She’s been trying to hold off the thought all day, in order to get through it like a functional human being, but _ghosts are real._ The world has changed, for the third time in as many months. _Ghosts are real,_ and that means all kinds of things.

It’s not that Lia had never believed in them before. She has the habit of believing in almost anything, at least for a while: last year she’d dedicated herself to the in-depth study of astrology. For a while, in sixth grade, she’d determined that praying to the Greek Gods was allowed under Jewish law as long as she didn’t worship them _first._ Then there had been her Wicca phase, and the time she’d been convinced she could control the weather because when she made a swooshy sound with her mouth, a gust of wind would usually go by within two minutes.

The world has always been full of possibility.

If people can leave their emotions behind them, why can’t they leave more?

So instead of logging in to her Polish class, she sits firmly on the bed, staring at the wall and saying very quietly, “Grandma, can you hear me?”

There’s no response.

If a fly lands on her nightstand, then that’s Hanna’s way of saying hello. If the wind makes the curtains flap, if the house creaks—

But nothing happens.

Just because something is possible, it doesn’t naturally follow that it’s possible _everywhere,_ right? Hanna had died at the hospital. Maybe she’s still there. But if she is, then maybe she’s still how she was when she died— angry, suspicious, delirious— and Lia doesn’t want to see her like that. She wants the grandma she knew here at home, who greeted her every morning with a bright _Hullo, Miss Liliana!_ and helped her with her science homework and disapproved of her t-shirts.

She waits a little longer.

She’s not sure the house has ever been this quiet.

Trying not to feel disappointed— _what did she expect? Really, what did she expect?_ — Lia gives up her attempted seance, and pulls out her homework.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles laughs, and takes a drink from the bottle. “This really wasn’t made for chugging,” he says. “We’re not in a pub. This was made for nice slow sipping at dinner parties, while people say unspeakably boring things and you not along and say ‘ahh’ or ‘is that so?’ and make scandalized noises at the proper times.”

Mercy, in Mrs. Crown’s eyes, turned out to be assigning an extra credit paper on How A Bill Becomes A Law. “Please be more detailed than Schoolhouse Rock,” she’d said.

“More detailed than _what?”_

The question had gotten Lia a look that she could roughly translate to _ugh, youth._ “I understand you’ve had a very difficult couple of months,” her teacher had said. “Rest assured that the teachers and staff are looking out for you.” On paper, it might have sounded reassuring, but in person it seemed almost like a threat. Which is what motivated Lia to start working on it on a Saturday.

Well. That and the fact that her parents are both around to holler whenever she tries to do something else. Which is a surprise in and of itself: Sarah Sidner had started going to temple for the first time in years when Grandma Hanna got sick. She’s breaking an eight week streak by being home.

Every week she had asked Lia if she wanted to come, but Lia hasn’t.

She watches the Schoolhouse Rock! video out of spite. And gets its stuck in her head. Her keyboard is so thick with annoyance that she’s typing mostly by feel, and the results are slow. She should have paid more attention to Mavis Beacon when she was a kid.

_Step one, a member of Congress drafts a bill…_

_(Yes I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill—)_

The doorbell rings. Desperate for distraction, Lia gets up, but her dad beats her to it. He says something to whoever is there, and Lia starts towards them when she hears Ashe’s voice in an appeal.

“We have to work on a project.” Ashe practically elbows Lia’s dad out of the way. 

“On a Saturday morning?”

“Would you rather we worked on it Sunday night?”

“We could start keeping the Sabbath and just not do any work at all,” Lia suggests. It’s more to needle her mother than her father, but it doesn’t get a reaction from either of them.

“Which project is it?”

“History,” Lia says quickly. “Just a worksheet. C’mon, my history stuff is upstairs.”

Suspicious eyes watch them go, and Lia is careful to close the door.

Ashe drops her backpack on Lia’s bed, and it lands more heavily than she’d expected to. “I have done a deep dive into the lands of conspiracy blogs,” she announces. “I think everyone on r/magnetowasright is on a terrorism watch list of some sort.”

“Probably.” If pressed, Lia would have to admit that she doesn’t know much about Magneto, but she’s never heard him referred to in a positive way. “Did you find anything out about the school?”

“Nothing online. Which is weird, right? Xavier, if it was the same Xavier, died after like, the internet was a thing. I guess if I was running a school for mutants I might not advertise. But there’s only one way to find out!” She opens the backpack, a trail of excitement behind her, pointing to a flashlight and some hospital masks. “What do you say?” 

Lia blinks. “You want to go to the house?” she’d assumed they’d go back eventually, maybe, but only after they’d done a lot of research. Figured out what the ghosts could be. Maybe found a way to get rid of them. She hadn’t thought about that much, but she’s seen two episodes of _Supernatural_ and three episodes of _Buzzfeed Unsolved_ so she’d had a vague idea of how things might go. That idea didn’t involve charging in blind two days later. She’s not sure what mutant ghosts could do to them, but it could be lots and lots of bad things.

Anyway. She has that extra credit essay. And Polish. The Polish book smeared with her mom’s feelings, and—

Yeah. Yeah, fuck it.

“Meet you there this afternoon? I’ll try and get enough homework done that my parents will let me out.” If she really commits to the essay, it should take her, what, forty minutes? How complicated can Congress possibly be? “One thirty?”

Ashe smiles, looking back at her backpack. “Okay.”

“I’ll text you if I can get out earlier. Or, you’re welcome to stay here, if you have something to do.”

“We did say we were working on a project.”

“Technically, we are.”

“Let me borrow your history book? I’ll stick around for an hour and then go home and tell my mom we’re going out, then I’ll meet you there.”

Ashe settles in by Lia’s pillow, phone propped up between the open pages of the book.

They look perfectly studious when Lia’s mom checks in five minutes later.

* * *

There’s something about the lawn. 

It’s quarter to two, there’s no sign of Lia yet, and Ashe can’t get over the lawn. The driveway. The road. They’re perfectly normal, albeit covered in growth, but there’s something creepy about them all the same.

Maybe she’s being stupid. This isn’t a daylight horror movie. It’s just an empty house. And an empty yard. 

She starts to circle the house, and it’s in the name of exploring, definitely not because she’s afraid of going inside. If she’s not scared, she won’t leave scared tracks for Lia to find later.

Where _is_ Lia? She hasn’t texted. If she leaves Ashe here to get killed by mutant defenses, then she’ll have to live with that, and it’ll serve her right.

Ashe is so busy not being scared that she trips over a grave, onto another grave.

“Shit! Fuck!” She manages to catch the taller gravestone and not go down completely, but she sits anyway, because it jerked her arm funny and her heart is racing. A second later she realizes what she’s staring at, and begins tugging at the weeds. “What the fuck?” The grass has a good grip on the slightly frozen ground, and it takes a moment before she can clear the name. 

_Jean Grey._

She’d watched old YouTube footage this morning of Anderson Cooper in a helicopter over Alcatraz. The Golden Gate Bridge was in a place it definitely was not supposed to be, and something that may or may not have been human remains could be seen down below. The top rated comment had said _THE MUTANTS MUST BE STOPPED,_ and the second comment had said _It was a government assassination! nobody saw Magneto, Xavier or Grey after that. WAKE UP._

Or maybe it had said _Gray._ Ashe had been more interested in the mention of Xavier at the time: but even if it was _Grey,_ that doesn’t mean it was _this_ Grey. It’s a common name, right? Ashe will look her up later to check. She takes a picture of the grave with the old Sony point-and-shoot she’d found in the basement. It has fewer megapixels than an old iPhone, but it won’t save the pictures to iCloud, either.

The second grave is taller, so it takes less time to find the name.

_Charles Xavier._

There’s a little picture and everything.

Ashe sits back on her heels.

So he was here.

And he’s dead.

He’s dead, and he died before everyone left, because they had time to set up a gravestone. Maybe Lia’s right, and it _is_ ghosts. 

There’s a symbol on his grave that matches the one on Jean Grey’s: where someone might have put a cross or an angel or a Star of David there's a circle, divided into four parts. No, wait, Ashe is a moron: it’s an X in a circle. Just slightly different from the X-in-a-circle logo inside the books. 

She’s pretty sure she’s seen it before. 

This morning. On conspiracy blogs. 

A mouse skitters past, and it’s then that she sees the third stone. 

Scott Summers.

That’s at least three dead people here. Dead people who probably didn’t expect their graves to be grown over, only to be rediscovered by a baseline high school student.

How did they die? Was it a secret, since there are no confirmations of Charles Xavier’s death online? Ashe is pretty sure you aren’t supposed to bury people in your front yard. Especially at a _school._ If nothing else, it’s basically asking for kids to smoke a joint on your grave.

There’s still no sign of Lia, but it took Ashe almost half an hour to walk here, so she’s not going home without doing _something._ Despite the graves, she hasn’t actually seen any ghost-like entities, so after a moment she pulls out her paper sanitary mask, carefully loops the strings over her ears, and approaches the house. They’d left the door cracked open behind them when they left— it’s frozen a bit, and Ashe has to kick it a few times to make it move. 

The inside isn’t that creepy in the daylight either. Just peeling paint and dusty furniture. Still, it’s still unsettling how lived-in it all looks.

Why didn’t they pack, when they left?

The books Lia had dropped last night are lying on the floor, and Ashe stuffs them into her backpack. They have the same cardstock covers as _Mutant Studies,_ so they’re probably going to get wrinkled. But at least they aren’t heavy. There are more bedrooms on his hall, as well, but she doesn’t go into them. Maybe she should start making a map, mark off the places they’ve been, go through it systematically— there have to be clues. A calendar, maybe, or an address book. Did people use address books when this place was abandoned? She sees an Usher poster through an open door. When did Usher first become a thing?

There’s still no sign of ghosts, or mutants, or Lia.

Ashe backtracks, turning left from the front entrance instead of right. The first room on this hall looks a parlor someone covered with linoleum. There’s a calendar hanging next to the chalkboard— November, 2008. Marie Curie’s month, apparently. A plastic skeleton dangles from a hook, and microscopes in plastic covers line a shelf. A teacher’s desk faces down heavy tables, each with two chairs and an attachment for a Bunsen burner. It would look more or less like the science lab at Ashe’s school if it wasn’t for the thick dust and paint debris that have covered every horizontal surface. 

She’s still close enough to the front door to hear someone else kick it open.

_Shit._

The desks are no good for hiding under, and for want of a better option Ashe ducks behind the skeleton, practicing an excuse— _I’m sorry Officer I just thought it would be a fun art project—_

“Ashe!”

Ashe tries not to touch anything so Lia won’t see how relieved she is. “Hey.”

Lia’s hair is frizzy from the walk, and she’s covered in leaves. “Were you hiding behind a skeleton?”

Yes. “No.” Ashe hides her hands in the pockets of her hoodie so she won’t give into the urge to give Lia a hug, leaving who knows what feelings on her shoulders. It’s so much nicer not to be alone here. “What happened to you?”

“Dad wanted to proof-read my essay. I texted you, but—”

“No coverage,” Ashe remembers. Duh. She’s an idiot. “I found gravestones, did you see them?”

“I just followed your trail into the house. What gravestones?”

“They’re kinda near the old fountain? There’s one for Charles Xavier, and someone named Scott Summers, and Jean Grey. There was an X logo on there, too. Could have been for the school, or…” it sounds stupid when she says it, but _that_ X logo looked different than the school’s. “Or maybe it was the X-Men.” 

“I dunno.” Lia opens one of the drawers of the teacher’s desk, flipping through papers. “I don’t think I’ve heard of Scott Summers, but the name Jean Grey sounds sort of familiar.”

The temperature in the room drops, and despite telling herself that she’s not afraid, Ashe hurries to Lia’s side.

“Jean,” an accented voice says, and they both flinch back. There’s a woman standing near the chalkboard now— dressed all in black, with short white hair and no irises in her eyes. “Scott. They were my family, too. But now you’re the only one left, so you better stay, do you understand?” she’s getting taller as she walks towards them— seven or eight feet, now, and Ashe spends so long watching her eyes that she nearly misses the fact that the woman’s legs end at the knee. “Stay with me,” she says, nearly reaching them— Ashe closes her eyes, grabbing Lia’s arm and thinking _ghosts aren’t real ghosts aren’t real—_

And nothing happens. 

“She’s gone,” Lia says. “Oh my god.” She rubs her hands over her face. “What the fuck, what the fuck. I told you. Ghosts.”

Perhaps they should run, but Ashe isn’t sure her feet are going to work: and the ghost didn’t _hurt_ them. She couldn’t even have been talking to them, even though she’d been _looking_ at them. Ashe should have turned the camera on— but she hadn’t been able to think past _ghost ghost ghost,_ still can barely do so, because, _ghost—_

She has to force herself to remove each finger from Lia’s arm. Pulling away from the one person she’s sure is alive seems to go against some sort of base instinct.

“So,” Lia says, voice shaky. “Next room?”

* * *

They step out of the classroom and come face-to-face with a girl.

She could be anywhere from fifteen to thirty, with long red hair and clothes that are either very hipster or very uncool. She’s wide-eyed and pretty and looks real enough that it takes Lia a moment to realize that not only are there no emotions around her, but her feet are barely there.

The girl looks at Lia and Ashe. Lia and Ashe look back.

And then she smiles. “Hi there!” Her voice echoes a little— no, not echoing. In the silence, Lia can hear something that sounds like wind.

“Hi,” Lia says, when it’s clear that whatever this is expecting an answer.

Is she talking to a ghost?

She reaches for Ashe’s hand, and Ashe must be just as freaked, because she clings back.

“I’m Jean Grey,” the girl says. “Are you a telepath, too?”

The wind gets louder, but it’s not wind, Lia realizes— it’s whispers. She takes a step back towards the science room, pulling Ashe with her. “What?”

Jean holds out a hand. “You feel like a telepath.”

Jean is dead. Jean’s grave is in the backyard. She’s talking to a ghost. But Lia reaches back with her free hand, and Jean’s grip feels solid. And what could be the harm in telling a secret to a ghost? “I can see feelings. But I don’t think I’m a telepath.”

“You’re not _not_ a telepath,” Jean says thoughtfully.

Ashe takes a step forward again, eyebrows scrunched. “Is that your grave out in the yard?”

Jean looks at Ashe like she’s only just realized she was there. “My grave? Am I dead?” she asks slowly. “I don’t…” A frown, and her face suddenly looks older. “Am I dead? Am I dead?” when she curls her fingers, a painting falls off the wall. Somewhere, a vase shatters. Lia squeezes Ashe’s hand tighter, because a loud creak is ringing around them, like the house is moving— it _is_ moving, the ceiling is getting closer— “Erik? Hank?” Jean asks, her voice getting higher. Terrified. “Are you there? Am I dead?”

Lia finally moves, half dragging Ashe down the hall, towards the door, but the house shakes again, and where is the door? It doesn’t seem to be where she left it, so Lia turns— away from Jean, going deeper into the house, trying not to see the walls moving around them. 

Another picture crashes down, and the roof groans like it’s going to fall in.

 _Run._ There’s got to be a back exit somewhere— they could break a window if they need to—

They almost fall through a door at the end of the foyer— an office, there’s a desk, and Lia remembers what someone told her once about earthquake drills and pulls herself and Ashe under it. Their legs stick out, but they can live without legs—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ashe is saying, has probably been saying the whole time. “Fuck, fuck—”

“Next time maybe don’t ask the ghost if she knows she’s dead, okay?” Their fear is a bright line across the floor, and if Jean is a telepath, maybe she’ll follow it. How do you hide from a telepath? “Don’t think,” Lia says. “Don’t think about her.”

“How the _fuck_ are we supposed to not think about her?”

Lia doesn’t know how telepathy works. But she’s not _not_ a telepath, apparently, so— “If she’s following our fear, we have to not be afraid. We have to think about something else.” 

Ashe is now both afraid _and_ embarrassed. “Like what?”

The noise from the hall is getting fainter.

“Anything. Anything.” She’s still holding Ashe’s hand, which is probably betraying her calm tone. “How many books are on that shelf there? One, two— no, that’s two books in a box set, that’s three books—”

“ _Fuck,_ ” Ashe says again. “Just… count in your head and we’ll see if they match.”

It takes a good bit of focus, counting books from ten feet away. By the time Lia says “a hundred and five,” and Ashe says “a hundred and twelve,” the house has gone still.

Of course the roof was never falling in. Roofs don’t just do that out of nowhere.

For a long moment, they sit and breathe. Let go of each other.

Lia twists around until just her shoulders are above the desk, and she drags her finger through the dust on top of it. Her fingerprints are still edged with nerves, but Jean isn’t reacting to it. She’s nowhere to be seen. 

“I’m so glad I’m not here by myself,” Ashe says abruptly.

“Yeah.” It’s a small word to encapsulate the enormity of the sentiment, but— _yeah._ She is too.

They come out slowly. The room has the severe comfort of a principal who is trying to come across as being approachable: there’s no chair behind the desk, but there’s one facing it, and that one is padded and soft-looking. Neat stacks of paper have been left out to yellow, and Lia is willing to guess that the file cabinet is neatly organized. 

“Maybe we should look around here first,” Ashe says, more afraid than she sounds. “See what we can find.”

Yes.

Anything to avoid the hallway.

The blue man— Hank McCoy— and the white-haired black woman hadn’t been threatening the way that Jean is.

Maybe that’s how she died—

No. Lia isn’t thinking about that. She’s going to think about these cabinets and how they’re locked. She’s going to go through this desk in search of a key, never mind that this is someone else’s personal business. Lia wants _answers._ There’s something here, right under her fingertips, and maybe if she figures out what it is all of this will make sense.

Ashe tiptoes to the door, opening it a crack and pressing her eye to the gap. Then she opens it more. “Look.” 

It’s the same as it looked when they came in. The pictures are on the wall. The vase is in one piece.

There’s no sign of the shaking that had torn through it just a few minutes ago.

“It wasn’t real,” Ashe says. “I wonder…” but whatever she wonders she doesn’t say, because instead of going back into the foyer she lets the study door close. She’s not as scared as she was. “How about the file cabinet?”

Er. “You don’t want to run for it?”

Ashe just shakes her head, frowning at the door like it has something to tell her. Looking very calm for someone who was just as terrified as Lia was, but, alright, it’s not like Lia is in a rush to leave either. Now that they’re here, and all. She doesn’t know when she’ll get another afternoon free. Even if she’s still half-shaking from adrenaline.

The key isn’t in an obvious place, but there are more papers, and a handwritten phone book. 

“Maybe one of these people will know something,” Ashe says, pulling an antique-looking camera out of her coat pocket and carefully photographing every page. “Here’s Hank McCoy's number. We should call it from a payphone somewhere, see if he picks up.” 

He won’t pick up. He’s dead. But maybe the person who does will be able to tell them what happened. “Where are we going to find a payphone?”

They both think for a moment. “Bus station?” Ashe offers. “Though then they’d know where to find us. I’ll search the numbers, see what comes up.”

That’s the part that Ashe loves. The puzzles. “Maybe you should become a journalist.”

“Like there will be _journalists_ by the time we’re done with college.”

Lia moves away from the desk. There’s a chess set by the window, sitting on its own little table. A game is partway in progress, and for a moment, Lia sees an old man hunched over it. Then he’s gone. Fast enough that she didn’t even have time to feel any way about it.

“Did you see that?” she asks.

Ashe looks up. “What?” 

The camera flashes, and again he’s there— silver hair, sharp face, hands folded as he contemplates the black side. And then he’s gone again. He doesn’t seem to care about their presence in the slightest, but it gives Lia the creeping feeling of being watched. 

Jean wasn’t still out in the hall, and the man isn’t here anymore, but—

“I don’t know that there’s anything we can do about it.”

Lia turns, expecting the man at the chessboard. But it’s the blue man, taller now as he walks past Ashe to the study door. “She just has to learn to control her powers, that’s all. Just like we did.”

“I don’t recall you learning that much.” The second voice comes from somewhere to Lia’s left, but there isn’t anyone there. Hank McCoy just laughs.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says. “I did have to adjust to the hands and feet, and leaving fur everywhere, but you were a little busy at the time.”

“In the hospital,” says the voice.

“I was going to say, cutting your ex’s face out of the photographs—”

“Oh, as if you weren’t doing the same—”

They vanish into the wall.

“Um?” Ashe says.

Instead of running away, this time, Lia follows them. It sounds like they know about Jean, or what Jean had just done. Do ghosts have nothing to do but gossip all day?

“Okie dokie then,” Ashe mutters, but she grabs the camera off the desk and follows Lia out the door. “We should probably put away the—”

“Ssh!”

McCoy leads them into a room farther from the front door. It appears to be a library, of sorts, and Ashe is probably going to want to catalog all the books as soon as whatever is playing out here ends.

Two men stand near the windows. They’re not _old,_ but they’re certainly grown-ups. One of them has a sharp profile, but the other’s face is almost out of focus. They don’t look around when Ashe and Lia enter.

Hank McCoy has disappeared.

“How old is this scotch?” one of the men asks, wiggling a bottle back and forth. The other one laughs.

“Older than either of us, at the very least.”

“Hmm.” The first man yanks the cork out. “A toast?”

“Dangerous, isn’t it? To celebrate what we’ve not yet accomplished?”

Ashe takes half a step towards one of the shelves, but Lia reaches out and catches her elbow, afraid the noise will alert the ghosts to their presence.

“Well, consider what we have. A new species, the extent of which neither of us knew until three months ago. A… well, I can’t say we have a proper fighting force. But we have allies.”

“You must have already started drinking, my friend,” says the other man. “That’s more positivity than you’ve displayed since I met you. But I knew about other mutants. At least, I knew Raven.”

“True. I suppose you’re the true discoverer. A— a _groovy mutation,_ isn’t that your line?” They’re leaning into each other a bit, and Lia wonders if they’ve walked in on something more personal than expected.

And— _discovering_ mutants? Mutants have been well documented for decades.

“Raven isn’t allowed to speak to you anymore.”

The man with the scotch smiles. “Well, it’s too late for that,” he says, holding out the bottle.

“I’ll get a glass.”

“Fuck the glass, Charles. Live a little.”

Charles laughs, and takes a drink from the bottle. “This really wasn’t made for chugging,” he says. “We’re not in a pub. This was made for nice slow sipping at dinner parties, while people say unspeakably boring things and you nod along and say ‘ahh’ or ‘is that so?’ and make scandalized noises at the proper times.”

“Is that so?” Scotch-man smiles even wider. Do all ghosts have that many teeth? “I imagine you were always the life of the party. So very proper.” He takes a drink himself.

“I was a very well-behaved child,” Charles says with great dignity.

“And if I asked Raven?”

A little blonde girl runs by. “Guess which one I am!” she shouts as she grows taller, a skirt falling around her waist. Then she’s gone. Another thing the men haven’t noticed.

Lia and Ashe look at each other.

“Pshaw.” Charles takes the bottle back. “You know, I can do all manner of improper things, but somehow— despite the fact that she’s been dead since the early fifties— there’s still my mother’s voice in my head, sounding appalled.”

This time it’s a woman who appears. She would look like an old-timey movie star, if her roots weren’t showing quite so much, and her lipstick wasn’t askew.

“ _Must_ you say such things, Charles?” she whines.

“What improper things? You can barely stand to drink scotch out of a bottle. Live a little,” the man repeats, and the phrase seems to echo— _live a little, live a little, live—_

The bottle disappears, and Charles taps his forehead once. “Alright,” he says, and leans up on tiptoes to kiss the other man right on the mouth. They both go out of focus with the motion, looking more like reflections on a windowpane than real people— the other man gets a hand in Charles’s sweater, and Lia has to look away. This has to be a memory, and it’s someone else’s.

Ashe is staring at her shoes, embarrassment clear even without checking the scuff marks of her feet on the ground. 

At least these men are ignoring them. Aren’t frightening like Jean. Lia has barely had the thought when the men disappear, and, _shit—_

“Shit,” she says aloud, because Jean is standing in front of them again, hands over her ears.

“Hey want to go check out the graves?” Ashe asks, voice far higher pitched than normal.

“Yep. Yep.”

They back out of the room, and this time, the door is there when they look for it.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MRO Bill charges into the gym with a tranquilizer gun raised and braced on his other arm like he thinks he’s James fucking Bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all two-ish of you who are following me into this really niche rabbit hole :D

High school gym has been derided in enough eloquence that Ashe always feels a little bad about enjoying it. She’s not particularly athletic, but she can, like, serve a volleyball without humiliating herself. And it’s the only class she shares with Lia this semester, so even when she sucks at whatever they’re doing, it’s alright when they’re on the same team. 

It’s also where the best drama is.

Ashe doesn’t like to gossip _,_ but she does like _overhearing_ gossip. She likes having all the information: it’s not like that’s a crime. And with fifty students in a class that involves a lot of milling about, people talk.

And sometimes they fight. 

Ellie McLean and Marissa Brian have been feuding for two days now. It’s the showy kind of fight designed to make the freshman class take sides, thus making the combatants the center of the social universe, but the details of the conflict are not clear. Ashe assumes it’s about a boy, because she isn’t sure either of them have the brainpower for anything more serious. If asked she’ll deny paying any attention at all. 

But it makes basketball a little more exciting. They’ve split off boys and girls into two simultaneous games, and Ashe is waiting on the sideline for her turn to rotate in. She wonders if they had gym at Xavier’s. What would that look like, with all the mutations? For some reason, what she’s imagining is _Space Jam,_ even though that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Lia is on the opposing team today— she passes to Marissa, and Ellie— who is on Ashe’s team— charges her like she’s personally insulted. They’ve been acting like there’s no one else on the court, which must have been why Lia passed to Marissa in the first place. Lia hates basketball.

Ellie gets the ball, and turns, but stops when Marissa says something. It’s inaudible over the shouts from the boys’ half, but Ellie wheels back around and throws the ball in Marissa’s face, only— only now Marissa is flying backwards. She keeps moving even after she lands, sliding across the smooth gym floor until she hits the stack of mats by the bleachers. 

_It’s not real,_ Ashe thinks automatically— but it is real.

Ellie’s hands and the basketball are glowing blue. 

She looks down, and then at her classmates, mouth half open in horror. The blue glow fades, but all the girls have seen it. 

Someone screams. Coach Dell blows a whistle, and it’s very quiet, very quickly.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie says, running to where Marissa is lying on the floor. “Marissa, I’m sorry—”

“Hey!” Dell takes a step between them, hands half raised like he’s defending himself. “Stay there.”

“I didn’t mean to—” she looks around, realizing that everyone is backing away, and Ashe looks for Lia, but she’d gotten shuffled to the other side of the room.

“Ellie’s a mutant?” Alison whispers.

The word spreads throughout the gym.

Coach Dell takes out his pager.

 _Don’t,_ Ashe thinks, but he presses the panic button and no one says a word.

Ashe hasn’t had any sympathy for Ellie in years, but she does now— she’s clearly terrified, hands tucked into her armpits like she’s hiding them away. Maybe Jean Grey or Hank McCoy would have known what to do, and Ashe wants to tell Ellie that there are people there who can help, but there aren’t. 

She doesn’t need Lia’s powers to see that Lia is terrified as well. If Lia does anything they’ll investigate her, but Ashe— Ashe should at least offer Ellie a kind word, while everyone is looking at her like this. But if she does then everyone will be suspicious, they might find out about the house, about Lia— 

MRO Bill charges into the gym with a tranquilizer gun raised and braced on his other arm like he thinks he’s James fucking Bond. “Everyone please walk to the atrium,” he says. “Miss, I need you to stand down.”

Ellie’s starting to cry, and Ashe doesn’t want to look at her, but she’s afraid to look anywhere else. “I didn’t _mean to!_ ” she wails. “Stop it—”

He shoots, and this time Ashe does move. Ellie stumbles backwards, flaring blue once again— Bill falls like someone had just kicked his feet out from under him, and then Ellie is crashing into Ashe, who has to take several steps backward to keep them standing upright.

“Asheleigh,” Ellie says, “Asheleigh tell my brother—” but she’s unconscious before she finishes the sentence, and Ashe again thinks _this isn’t real,_ but this isn’t the house on Graymalkin Lane. This is high school gym class, and MRO Bill is now staring at her like she’s in league with Satan as she carefully lowers Ellie to the floor. She wants to ask what they’re going to do with her, she wants to stand guard to make sure Bill doesn’t carry her anywhere while she’s unconscious, but she’s all too aware of the looks now and she is a giant fucking coward who backs into the crowd.

“Alison, Felicia, please take Marissa to the nurse’s office.” Dell’s face has turned a funny color. Is he about to vomit? Or panic?

Does anyone here understand what just happened?

Lia does. Lia’s at her side now, hand digging into Ashe’s elbow. She looks a little sick, too, shuffling her feet forward very slowly until they’re past the trophy cabinet and out of the gym. When Ashe looks back, it’s to see MRO Bill and Coach Dell standing next to Ellie. MRO Bill is on the phone.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Ashe asks.

“Jail, I expect.” Marissa, half supported by Alison and Felicia, seems to have found her voice at last. “She’s dangerous.”

“It’s not her fault,” Lia says quietly. “It was— I mean, it looked like an accident.”

“If you _accidentally_ kill someone, that’s still manslaughter.”

“Except you’re not dead.”

“I could have been!” Marissa sways to one side, though whether it’s because she’s hurt or for dramatic effect Ashe can’t tell. Felica stumbles into the 2011 Basketball commemorative banner trying to hold her up. “She won’t be able to come back to school, anyway. Too dangerous.”

Lia’s fingers are nearly cutting off the circulation in Ashe’s arm. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t pissed her off—”

“Oh, so it’s my fault if she hurts me? What kind of victim blaming bullshit is that?” 

Oh, Jesus. “I don’t think that’s what victim blaming means,” Ashe says. She tugs Lia after her into the atrium, while Marissa and her posse turn for the nurse’s office. The other forty-four members of the class mill about uncomfortably, only just beginning to talk. Some have their phones out, probably realizing they’re on the front lines of breaking news.

Hell, they’ll probably be _on_ the news. There hasn’t been a mutant incident since Shawn.

Ashe wants to be sick.

Did Ellie already know she was a mutant? Had she been hiding it this whole time?

Once there had been a place that could have helped her, and now everyone there is dead or missing. Because that is the consequence of mutation.

Could they do that to Lia? Even though she can’t hurt anyone?

Ashe wants to think they couldn’t.

* * *

She couldn’t see.

Ellie and Marissa’s fear had been so strong that it hung in the air around them. The emotions from the rest of the class, jammed together in the shuffle— fear and excitement and shock coming from their faces, their hair, their hands—had turned into a fog that took almost half an hour to dissipate. If Lia hadn’t found Ashe before they entered the hallway, she’d have been stumbling along blind. 

And if someone had asked her why—

 _They can’t take me away,_ she thinks. _I’ve_ _never hurt anyone._ But what if they say her existence is a breach of privacy laws, or— or something? They’ll come up with anything, they always do. Ellie hadn’t done anything worse to Marissa than the boys have done to each other during lunch and recess.

Lia should tell her parents what’s going on. They’d know what to do.

Or they’d be disappointed and scared and they’d tell someone and Lia can’t risk that.

But it’s okay. She has Ashe. Ashe isn’t going to turn on her like every kid at school turned on Ellie.

Every kid but Ashe, anyway. Lia’s torn between being terrified for them both and loving her so much she wants to cry.

“Did you see what happened?” it’s the constant question in the halls. “Ellie McLean is a mutant—”

“Superstrength—” 

“Heard she turned blue—”

“Blasted Marissa across the room—”

“Flicked her away with her little finger—”

By lunch most teachers seem to have given up on the teaching part of their jobs. Now that the danger has passed, most students are excited about being so close to something so notable. The thrill of the thing. A break from monotony.

“I’ve known Ellie for years, always suspected something was up—”

“Known her for years, never dreamed—”

“We were paired on a project last year, do you think she—?”

Lia taps her pencil against her desk and wishes she were at the Graymalkin house. Even when they’re scary, the ghosts are almost preferable to this. A secret world where mutants rule.

_Dead mutants._

“Liliana Sidner?”

Janet-from-the-office is leaning around the doorway to the math class. “Can I borrow you for a moment?”

What did they find out what has she done, she hasn’t done _anything,_ they can’t— Lia looks to her teacher, but he waves her forward with a lazy hand movement. Mrs. Crown, she thinks, would have at least scolded Janet for distracting her.

She shoves her binder into her backpack and takes it with her.

If they’re about to kick her out of school, she doesn’t want anyone going through her stuff.

Maybe someone noticed how disoriented she was earlier. Maybe someone noticed her talking to Ashe. With each step down the hall, she tries to think of a new excuse. _I just thought mutants were interesting. I just was so shocked and afraid. My grandma died recently and I’ve just been having a very hard time. I used to have a dog and he died and it was very traumatic. Please call my mom. I won’t speak without a lawyer—_

“Just wait here,” Janet says, showing her to the office couches, in front of the doors to the guidance counselor and the MRO. “Bill will be with you in a moment.”

“Bill?” Lia repeats. “Why?”

“I’m sure he’ll explain. Nothing to worry about.” Janet’s leaving trails that say there is quite a bit to worry about, but maybe she’s just apprehensive about all the paperwork. Maybe they’re going to make all the students get genetic testing done. Maybe they’re about to expose them all. That’d be crazy, wouldn’t it? But it’s hard to think when she’s literally sitting in fear and paranoia.

What of that fear Ellie’s? Ellie’s family’s? Marissa’s?

The office door opens. “Liliana?” MRO Bill asks. She stands, and— and Ashe is walking out.

Lia feels like she’s missed a step. Like she did when Jean Grey screamed and the world started to collapse. 

Did Ashe give her up?

Ashe has got her back to Bill and seems to be trying to say something to Lia with her facial expressions, but Lia can’t read it, and tries to show as much without letting Bill see. Ashe reaches up to squeeze her arm as she goes by, and there’s a strong _focus_ around the love and confidence she leaves behind.

Now angry with herself for even considering what she had, Lia puts her opposite hand over that spot, as if to protect it from Bill.

“Come on in,” he says. 

His office is more of an afterthought than anything else: it had once been half the counselor’s, before a diver had been put up. The soundproofing isn’t as good as it probably should be— the faint murmur of Ms. Jackson on the phone can be heard through the back wall. Said wall has been covered by posters saying helpful things like “SEE SOMETHING? TALK TO A GROWN-UP” and “BE WHO YOU ARE.”

 _BE WHO YOU ARE_ seems rather contradictory to MRO Bill’s purpose, but Lia supposes it wouldn’t be high school if they weren’t throwing conflicting expectations at you.

There’s fear and anguish all over the chair, and Lia tries not to make a face before sitting down.

“Liliana,” Bill says, folding his hands neatly in front of him. He’s scared, too. This is probably the first time he’s actually had to do his job. “Do you know why I’ve asked you here?”

She can think of many reasons, but she doesn’t _know._ “’Cause I was in class with Ellie? What’s going to happen to her?”

His smile is probably supposed to be reassuring, but it reminds Lia of her grandma’s nurses. _Bad news but we’ll make it sound nice._ “All of that is confidential, but I promise that she’s going to get the help she needs. That was your friend Asheleigh’s first question as well.”

“There was a kid in her sister’s class who just disappeared.” Lia tries not to make it obvious that she’s looking at the smudge marks his hands have left on the desk. There’s fear, there’s definitely fear, and what else?

She should have practiced more.

“What— disappeared? You’re referring to Shawn Shaffer? I’m sure he just went to a place where they could help him. He hurt quite a few people— his parents probably didn’t want to share details in case someone went after him to retaliate. _Disappeared_ , honestly.” He shakes his head. “Not everything is a vast conspiracy, you know.”

_Lots of things are._

“You were right that I did want to talk to you about Ellie, though. If she only manifested her powers today, then that’s an unfortunate accident. But if she had been hiding these powers for a while, then, had someone spoken up sooner, the injuries and emotional distress caused today could have been prevented.”

Is he trying to make her fess up? Trying to make her admit to being a mutant herself? She wishes Ashe were here. “Okay.”

“You’re not in trouble.” It really sounds like she’s in trouble. “But is there anything you know about this situation, or perhaps other similar ones?”

What. “Are you asking if I knew Ellie was a mutant? Or if anyone else is?”

He spreads his hands. “Did you?”

“No. Ellie and I aren’t, like, friends.”

“I see.”

“She is— was— a lot more popular than me.”

“Right.”

They stare at each other. Lia wants to cry, but she does not want to cry in front of MRO Bill. The tissues on his desk are a test of weakness and she will not fail.

“There have been some mutant gangs approaching the area,” he says. “Have you heard about this?”

“No.” She really hasn’t. _Mutant gangs?_ Like the X-Men? Like the Brotherhood? Just mutants causing mayhem? Or just mutants walking down the street together and freaking people out? She might like to join the last kind of mutant gang, but she’ll never be brave enough. Ashe would do it, if she were a mutant.

“I am here to look out for everyone’s safety,” Bill continues. “I trust if you had heard something, you would share it.”

“Sure.”

“My door is always open.”

Lia pointedly looks towards where the door is closed. “Can I go back to math?”

“Yes. All the school’s mental health resources are at your disposal, should you need them. We’re offering this to all the students who might be distressed by today’s events.”

“Great.” Lia stands up, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. Her own stress is permanently baked into the straps, but it’s even worse today. It takes all her concentration to walk, not run, out of the office. 

* * *

“I bet it was Marissa,” Ashe seethes. “She thinks we took Ellie’s side. And I bet her parents were there. That’d make sense— he kept saying that he knew I was friends with Ellie, but I haven’t been friends with Ellie since we were like, _seven._ Someone’s parents must have told him.” 

“Yeah.” They’re waiting for Brook outside the band room, but she hasn’t come out yet. They whole band is probably gossiping under the noise of what’s supposed to be a jazz trumpet. It sounds more like a herd of sleepy bees. “People in that office were really upset. Who knows what they said.” 

“Yeah. I told him Ellie didn’t talk to me. But he seemed to think that I knew a lot about mutants— do you think someone overheard us talking?”

“We do eat in Mrs. Crown’s room.” Just because she doesn’t let MRO Bill into her room, Lia realizes with a sinking feeling, it doesn’t mean that she hasn’t been reporting back to him. 

“And we did Google Xavier and mutants on the school wifi. Bet they can track that.”

“Fuck.” They’re stupid. “If I could just get better at this— I know Bill is afraid of something. There was so much feeling all over that office. Mixed feelings, they’re like— stripes, or braids, or, or plaid. If I could figure out how to separate the threads I— I wouldn’t be able to reads his mind, exactly, but if I could track his shifts in mood, that would give us something. Everyone was so scared today that I could see it all over them, not just in the trails they left behind. If I could see like— not all the time, but when I wanted to—” she could know everything. Protect herself here, but also she’d be great at sales or public speaking or politics, being able to perfectly read a room. “I always think of emotions as just how someone is, something individual, but if I could learn to see the changes, how people interact with each other— Mr. Johnson felt guilty when he was talking to Kaya’s mom last week. I wasn’t paying attention, but if she felt guilty too, that could mean they’re up to something, right?” 

The possibilities are spilling out like other peoples’ emotional trails. Most people don’t feel things too strongly most of the time, but if she can learn to see it anyway, pull answers from the muddled signs of existence— would that be like telepathy?

She’s not _not_ a telepath.

“Should you?” Ashe asks.

Lia turns to look at her.

There’s fear curling around Ashe’s shoulders, and it feels like being punched in the gut.

“What do you mean? It’ll keep us _safe._ ”

“I’m not going to cry about Bill’s civil rights. But— what about everyone else? Shouldn’t people be able to keep their own feelings private, if they want to?”

“No one’s feelings are entirely private. Like, when your mom is mad, you just _know,_ right? Why shouldn’t I get good at it?”

Why is Ashe so afraid? Afraid like Bill was afraid, like Marissa, and that’s not _fair,_ that’s not fair, that’s a betrayal because Ashe was supposed to be the person who wasn’t. Lia puts her hand back on her arm, trying to protect the spot with Ashe’s love from all the anxiety coming her way.

“My mom also knows what _I’m_ feeling too! It’s what happens when you know each other.”

“You know all _my_ secrets. Why are you scared of me?” She’s not going to cry. She’s not going to cry.

“All of them?” There’s something pointed to the question. Ashe is sad now, as well as angry, but Lia is too upset with her to ask why.

“I thought you were all for me exploring this. You were the one who wanted to experiment. Was that just about finding out how much you could lie? Am I okay as long as I’m one of the _good ones?_ As long as I’m _safe?_ ” she wishes Ashe could see how she sees. She wishes she could spread her anger and disappointment all over Ashe’s things, the way that this hallway will be forever stained by Ashe’s fear.

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Then why are you _scared?_ ”

Ashe opens her mouth, and then closes it before saying anything. She’s angry, too. Scared and angry and sad and she can’t hide it and Lia can’t see past it.

“Fine,” Lia says, not waiting for a response. “Tell Brook I’m going to walk home.”

“It’s like an hour!”

“I’ll live.” The jazz trumpet has finally stopped, and Lia stomps towards the exit. “I need to be somewhere where people aren’t afraid.”

She walks straight into the panic bar, pushing the door open with her head, and stalks out into the cold. 


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Peace was never an option,” he says. It’s an old man’s voice coming from a younger man’s body. “War is coming. War is inevitable.”

Half the class does not show up to school the next day. Lia included. 

She hasn’t texted Ashe, and that’s fine, that’s, whatever, fuck her too, right? If she’s that mad then Ashe can be that mad right back, to cover up the fact that she’s a cowardly fucking baby who knows full well that her righteous indignation was born from fear. 

“I suppose we might as well just have a work day today,” says Mrs. Crown, looking decidedly unimpressed with the attendance. “And _please_ refrain from looking up anything inappropriate on the school Wi-Fi, I do dislike getting emails about it.” 

That’s that question answered, then.

The next day, Ashe begs out of school, and her mom doesn’t put up a fuss. Ashe helps her wrap Christmas presents for the cousins, because Connie Jiang does not believe in setting foot in a post office after Thanksgiving. Then Ashe watches half the first season of _Stranger Things_.

She has to sit on her hands so she won’t text Lia. 

It turns out, she’s not that good at staying angry. Especially when she understands exactly why Lia reacted how she did. 

Lia doesn’t text her either. 

It’s fine. It’s whatever. 

Ashe pokes at her food and tries not to look as though she’s watching her phone. “Have you heard what’s going to happen to Ellie?” 

“No,” her mom says. “But the mutant resource officer told us of your concerns.” 

So much for confidentiality. Were they waiting for Ashe to bring it up, or were they just not worried about it? “I’ve just heard that mutant kids just disappear.” 

“Heard from _where?_ ” 

Online, mostly. “MRO Bill said they were sending Ellie somewhere that can _help._ Do those places actually exist? Like, a school for mutants?” if Xavier’s was open just down the street, surely her parents would have known about it. 

“Schools for mutants?” her dad repeats. “Sounds dangerous, that many uncontrolled powers together. I imagine they’re finding her… I don’t know, powers therapists or something.”

Right. “Conversion therapy?” Ashe says, with as much disdain as she can muster.

“I really don’t know. But her parents aren’t sending her to a gulag, if that’s what the people you follow on twitter told you.”

Ashe scowls at her potatoes. 

“ _Shawn_ just disappeared,” Brook says. “He was dating Taylor, you remember, and Taylor said she tried to get in touch with him for months afterward.”

“MRO Bill said they probably didn’t tell anyone for his own protection.” Ashe tries to make it clear how much she trusts MRO Bill’s assessment of things.

“Shawn’s parents _loved_ Taylor, they wouldn’t have tried to keep her away from him. She didn’t think they knew where he’d gone either.”

“That’s ridiculous,” their dad says. “I’m sure there are lots of reasons to keep the location of young mutants safe— they might trust Taylor, but what if Taylor had told someone else where he was? Someone with a grudge? Those places have to be secure. And there are reasons to not deliver messages. I’m sure they just wanted Taylor to move on. She shouldn’t be with someone that dangerous, anyway.”

Ashe continues scowling.

“An email went out about a mutant gang, and there have been some posts going around Facebook. Apparently, they’ve been moving out from the city. I want you girls to keep your phones charged at all times, do you hear me?” Their mother points a spoon at Ashe first, which isn’t fair. Brook goes out on her own more often.

And if Ashe can’t trust things she reads on twitter, why can her mom trust _please share!!!_ posts on Facebook? Facebook is just a cesspit of things to freak out suburban parents. Ashe excuses herself from the dinner table and thinks of texting Lia again, and it hits her out of nowhere that Lia might never text her back again and she barely makes it to her room before she starts crying. Just a few days ago, everything was— well it wasn’t normal, but at least she knew she had Lia, and two weeks ago they hadn’t yet gone to the end of Graymalkin Lane— two months ago Lia hadn’t had powers—

And Ashe misses Hanna, too. She misses telling her about memes and classroom drama. And she misses middle school, where she’d had more than one friend and known the school and all the teachers and had been on the soccer team.

A blanket over the face seems like a good solution, and she lets herself sniffle without the danger of being overheard.

Fifteen or so minutes later, she pulls out her phone again, because if the emotions aren’t going away on their own then she could at least try and distract herself. Feeling a bit like a creep, she searches _Charles Xavier gay,_ because if that Charles _was_ the same Charles— and she can’t be sure, since he had hair and wasn’t in a wheelchair and his face had been a little too blurry to get a clear look at— then that means…

What does it mean? Why does she care? She feels a little bit as though that would give her more of a claim on that house, on the history inside it, but it doesn’t. It wasn’t a school for the gays.

But she wants to know anyway. She knows that’s hypocritical, considering her argument with Lia, but it’s not as though Charles is alive to be upset.

Nothing turns up, which means that either it was a different Charles in that library, or Ashe and Lia now know one more secret.

What had the men talked about? Something about discovering mutants and someone named Raven, but mutants have been well-documented for decades. And Charles’s mother… she had been dressed in the type of clothing they wore on _Mad Men._ If he’d been a young man in the forties, fifties— when did that memory take place? Sixties? Seventies?

What kind of courage did it take to be a man kissing your male friend in the sixties and seventies? To build a home for mutants before the public knew much about them? Alright, one of those things is rarer than the other and maybe Ashe’s priorities are wrong but— but he did that, and here Ashe is, afraid to stand up for Ellie in gym class.

Charles must have been a mutant himself, from how they were talking. But there’s no mention of it in any of the news articles, and Ashe gets one paragraph into the free abstract of one of his scientific articles before giving up. There must be some clues at the house somewhere. Or maybe a ghost will tell her. She’ll go on Saturday. And if she still hasn’t heard from Lia by then, then she’ll have an excuse to go to her house, because whatever information she can get is going to be more important than Lia being mad at her, right?

She doesn’t care if Lia can read her emotions anymore, as long as Lia _talks_ to her. 

* * *

Lia can’t sleep.

She feels like she hasn’t slept for days. Months. She counts sheep and rabbits and ducks and tries to picture every number in ornate calligraphy, getting up to two hundred and forty-seven before she remembers MRO Bill shooting Ellie again, and then she sits up.

Ellie’s missing, Ashe isn’t speaking to her, and maybe she deserves it. But Jean Grey did. Jean Grey seemed like she’d have answers for her.

Lia isn’t sure she cares that much about the X-Men, and her political stance isn’t much more sophisticated than _people should be nice to each other,_ but things are getting worse and Lia almost went blind on Tuesday and she just wants someone to tell her what’s _happening_ to her.

So what if the only other mutant she knows is dead?

(Or _knows_ she knows. She’d known Ellie. If Lia had gotten past her disdain for popular girls, could they have helped each other? She’ll never know.)

She’ll go back to the Graymalkin house tomorrow. Ashe might even be there— or maybe not. Maybe Ashe is done with it. Maybe she’s going to tell everyone, like Lia was afraid she would the other day—

No. No she won’t. Because if Ashe tells everyone Lia’s a mutant, then Lia could tell everyone all sorts of things about Ashe. And then she feels sick for thinking it, because it’s one fight. It’s one fight. They’ll be fine. Marissa and Ellie were friends until two weeks ago, but they weren’t friends like Lia and Ashe are friends.

She doesn’t know what she’d do without Ashe as her friend.

It won’t be the same as the first thirteen years of her life, because Lia isn’t the same, she can’t just go back—

And she can’t stay in bed.

She needs to talk to Jean, and she doesn’t want Ashe to be there when she does. The only way to be sure she won’t be is to go now. But it’s like, twenty degrees out, so she has to dig out her long underwear, and then her flannel and sweatshirt and boots. It’s not until she’s standing in her room, dressed for the Arctic, that she realizes she’s a giant idiot who forgot about the house’s security system. 

If she goes out the front door, or opens a window, her parents are going to get a little alert and want to know why.

But— the basement! There’s a ground-level basement window that they literally never open, so it probably isn’t alarmed. Lia tiptoes as carefully as she can in boots out of her bedroom, past the anxious-sleepy trails her parents had left, and downstairs.

She’s going to be in so much trouble. They hadn’t made a thing of the Ellie incident, believing Lia when she’d told them she’d never been in danger and Marissa had blown genuine concern out of proportion, but they’d been stressed by the mutant gang news. It’s not like there’s been any danger around Salem Center or North Salem, though, and all teenagers sneak out of the house. At least she’s not going to a Party With Boys. Take that, Grandma Hanna.

The window is harder to open and shorter than she remembers it, and Lia has to wiggle-flop her way into the yard like a very pathetic penguin.

She leaves the window cracked open and makes it five feet into the yard before she imagines someone finding it, sneaking in through the basement and killing her parents. She backtracks to close it.

“Don’t freeze shut, please.” If she can’t get back in, she’ll be grounded for the rest of her life.

 _This is stupid,_ she thinks, half-waddling down the street in her three pairs of pants. For one thing, she’s overdressed. She’s going to be sweating by the time she gets to the house. And she’s only got her little camping headlamp and she could fall and die or get kidnapped— but this is exhilarating, too. She’s never snuck out before, and shouldn’t everyone do it at least once?

The street looks different when she’s not supposed to be on it. No cars are driving past, and there are only lights in a couple windows. It’s half past one in the morning on a Thursday. The people who live here work Monday through Fridays, off at five. They come home to their kids and their dogs and they go on family ski trips and it’s all perfectly lovely, except that she can see the cracks.

They’re everywhere.

Misery and anger smeared across the Rolands’ porch and walkway. Guilty lust on the Jacksons’ upper window. Sadness in the Finleys’ garden. There’s joy, too, and excitement, and just the regular _fine_ of a regular day overlaying all of it.

Lia doesn’t know how to not see it. Not any more than someone can make themselves colorblind.

But Ashe hadn’t been wrong, had she? Aren’t people entitled to their privacy? Lia’s parents are trying to hide the depths of their grief, and they’d be upset to know how completely exposed they are. And just because Lia has chosen to share all her secrets with Ashe, it doesn’t mean the reverse has to be true.

She’d keep her eyes closed every time they saw each other, if that’s what it would take for Ashe to talk to her again.

In the dark, Lia almost trips over the hole in the fence, and then the Graymalkin mansion is in front of her. An empty, dark shape against a cloud-slate sky.

It almost feels like a friend. A terrifying friend that had once trashed a hallway— but it hadn’t, had it? It had all been fine when they left.

Going into it at night by herself is a terrible idea. Nobody knows where she is. If one of the ghosts chooses this moment to actually hurt her, no one might find her for days. Or ever.

She should go home.

Instead, she walks up the drive and through the front door.

And inside, it’s daytime.

Sunlight streams in through the windows. The paint isn’t peeling, and there’s nary a cobweb in sight. The halls are full of kids, Lia’s age and younger, talking and laughing. It looks like passing period, the way they’re moving with books under their arms, lingering in doorways like they’ve got all the time in the world. Many of them don’t have visible marks, but Lia knows they’re mutants, the same way she knows joy from sadness.

But there’s something off about them as well. The longer she looks, the more she sees— they’re fuzzy around the feet, even as their heads bob with each step. One girl has a VOTE MONDALE button pinned to her bag, and a few of the others look wrong, the way Jean had looked wrong. The worry lines of an adult on a teenager’s face. Slightly out of step with their age.

With their time.

But this was it. This was the Xavier Institute.

And it was here for decades.

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that it closed just a few years before Lia needed it. It’s not fair that they needed it in the first place, because Lia likes her school and adores Ashe with everything she has, but these students look like…

They look like they belong somewhere.

Lia realizes she hasn’t moved from the front doors. She closes it behind her, trying to walk slowly, afraid the illusion will fade— because it’s not real, she knows it’s not real. The ground is cold beneath her feet, and when the bell rings and the halls clear, it becomes obvious that the students have left no feelings behind. Just the whispers, lingering in the background.

Something rumbles behind her, and Lia turns, half expecting to see someone with a cart or a bicycle— but it’s Jean Grey again. Older than she’d seemed last time.

 _Can’t hurt me,_ Lia reminds herself. _Not real._

“Jean,” she says, and smiles.

“Hello.” Jean keeps walking, but gestures for Lia to follow her. “So glad you came back. You must have questions.”

Endless questions. Jean doesn’t mention destroying the hallway, so Lia tries not to think about it. _Telepath._ “This is the Xavier Institute?”

“Xavier Institute, Xavier’s School for the Gifted, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. We went through a few names, but we are always here to help mutant children who needed it. Any mutant who needed it.”

“It looks beautiful,” Lia says honestly.

“It is.”

They pass a classroom, and Lia catches a glimpse of the white-haired woman inside. There’s a map of the Roman Empire on an overhead projector.

“I don’t know any other mutants,” she tells Jean. “Or I didn’t think I did. There was one girl at my school, she used mutant powers by accident this week. She sort of threw another student without touching her. And a boy a few years ahead of me. He had fire powers. They both left. I hope they went somewhere as nice as this, but I’m scared that they didn’t.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Jean says vaguely. “We all need someone to support us.”

She says it like she’s responding to something else, but Lia keeps talking anyway. She hadn’t realized how much she needed someone removed from the situation who was willing to listen. “I have my friend Ashe. You saw her. But she’s mad at me right now. You’re a telepath, right?”

“Yes.”

The halls are quiet now. There are no voices from inside the rooms. Just that occasional rolling sound, and the faintest of whispers.

“Can you ever… _not_ hear peoples’ thoughts?”

“I can ignore them. I can focus on something else. I can try and build up shields in my mind. But it still feels like standing in a crowded room, hearing hundreds of voices at once. For you, it’s like looking at a Jackson Pollock.”

It takes Lia a moment to remember who that was. “Abstract?”

Jean points, and then there’s what Lia assumes is a Pollock hanging in place of one of the normal oil landscapes. 

And yeah, if emotions were colors, they might look a bit like that.

“You can’t help what you see. I can’t help what I hear. And our friends might never understand.” Jean reaches her hand to her head as if she’s adjusting a hat. There are stories in that sentence that Lia wants to ask about, but she doesn’t want to be rude— and yet, by thinking it, she’s effectively asked anyway. “I pretended to be normal. I pretended to be polite. The people I loved told me not to read their minds, and oh, I tried, but I couldn’t always help it. I could do the mental equivalent of stuffing my fingers in my ears, humming a tune—” she turns away from Lia, looking back down the empty hallway. It’s growing steadily darker. “But they left anyway, and maybe they were right to do it—”

“ _Jean,_ ” Lia says, trying not to think about a shaking house.

“Jean,” Jean echoes. “Jean, Jean—”

Lia could swear she feels a strong wind, even though that’s impossible, the walls are too close: and there’s a wall of water bearing towards them, on them before she can think to run—

It crashes down, and Lia covers her head, bracing for impact. But it never lands. When she finally looks up, she’s alone. The light and the Pollock are gone, and she fumbles with her headlamp, but she can’t find the button to turn it on. She has to take it off and feel around the edges, pressing down on every spot until— finally.

It’s a reading light and not much more, but it shows her where the walls are. Her own trail is leading back to the door, all tentative hope.

“Jean?” she calls. “Anybody?” 

“I’m sorry about Jean,” says a grave voice behind her. “Truly.”

She hadn’t realized it when they entered the room, but she’s in the office they’d found earlier. A man stands by the window, perfectly visible even in the faint light. He’s wearing a cape and a helmet and Lia can only place him so quickly because Ashe had talked about him last weekend.

Magneto.

Magneto is dead, too?

“You’re sorry?” Lia asks, but he isn’t looking at her. He’s looking somewhere slightly to her left, though there’s nothing there but whispers.

“You’re sorry?” says another voice, from the empty space. “You show up here in my house after you try to use me to— to— and you claim you’re sorry about Jean?”

She’s pretty sure it’s the same voice that was talking to Hank McCoy.

“I _am_ sorry,” Magneto says. He leans like he’s going to take a step forward, but then appears to think better of it. “Jean was intelligent and powerful and a strong voice for the cause. Her loss is all of ours.” 

“Ours,” says the Voice. “Not yours. You might not have killed her, but if you hadn’t left me there with _him_ and taken the helicopter then all the X-Men might have all gotten out. Alive. Safe. She would be here, and you and I would be—”

“Allies? Stryker tortured me for weeks. He tortured every mutant in the _world._ That required an answer.”

“You answered when you left him to die. I didn’t fight you on that: leaving him might have even been the right thing to do. But you used _me_ to... can you imagine if you’d succeeded? A wasteland. Mutant children and babies, unable to take care of themselves. The _stench_ as the bodies rotted, all their dying moments in my head forever— and I’d have to live knowing that you two were the ones that made me do it.”

What the _hell_ are they talking about? How many people did Magneto try to kill?

“We were angry,” Magneto says.

“Well _I’m_ fucking angry, and I don’t commit genocide, Erik!”

Magneto— _Erik?_ — looks hard at the point in space where the Voice must be. “I don’t know if it helps anything,” he says, “but I’m glad that Storm stopped you. Stopped me.”

“I don’t believe you.” 

Magneto reaches up, putting gloved hands on his helmet.

“Don’t—” says the Voice, suddenly desperate—

But he takes the helmet off anyway.

Lia can’t see what he’s feeling, but suddenly, she can _feel_ it. A pain and rage and remorse and love that’s not hers, and it’s almost suffocating.

“This doesn’t fix it.” The Voice is quieter now.

“I know.” Magneto hops onto the windowsill with an amazing amount of dexterity, considering his age. “Take care, Charles.”

Charles.

Then he’s gone, and there’s still no more sign of the Voice than there was before. The study is how she and Ashe left it last weekend, with the papers hastily put away, and the chessboard that the old man had sat by— and Magneto was that old man, Lia realizes. Even as she thinks it, he reappears.

He looks far younger than he had on the windowsill. His hair is brown and he’s wearing a turtleneck— that was him in the library, Lia realizes, kissing Charles and talking about a new mutant race.

How can that person be Magneto? But it _is—_ he’s got the same eyes, same cheekbones.

“Peace was never an option,” he says. It’s an old man’s voice coming from a younger man’s body. “War is coming. War is inevitable.”

She isn’t sure if he’s talking to her, but she answers when it’s clear the Voice isn’t going to.

“I can’t fight with my powers.” If either side, human or mutant, comes for her, what then? It’s not as though she can throw fireballs or read minds or control the weather.

“You see emotions.” So he _is_ talking to her. “Where people were, and how they’ve been. You could be the perfect hunter, following injured or frightened prey. You could know where someone hurts, and exactly where to destroy them. If you learn to identify individuals and complicated feelings based on trail alone, there will be no one who is a secret to you. And unlike a telepath, you’ll be able to sleep at night. Unlike an empath, you’ll be able to see how others feel without feeling it yourself.” He’s studying her, but it doesn’t feel creepy. Just curious.

Lia imagines walking through town, on the trail of MRO Bill. Finding him hiding behind a bush somewhere, terrified. Imagines walking up to him, and— and then what?

“I don’t want to hurt people.”

“You could always help them, I suppose,” he says. “Everyone wants to be understood.”

What had that burst of emotion been, and how had she felt it? “Even you?”

He smiles, and it’s not a nice smile, even though she thinks it was intended to be. “Of course. But too much understanding is dangerous, as well. The humans are afraid. To their very core. If you understand that fear, if you empathize with that fear, you may start to think that fear is justified. You might fold yourself away to keep them happy. Suppress your nature until you’re living as half of yourself, all in the hopes that one day you’ll be happier for doing so.” His face is twisting, turning to something else. “Half-life, full life, what’s it matter?”

There is more than one lifetime in his face.

“What happened to you?” Lia asks.

Magneto just smiles again, looking older than he had a moment ago. “What didn’t?”

“What happened to the school?”

He flexes a hand, and for a moment, the walls ripple. “What happened? They came, as we always knew they would again but with more forces and more preparation, and the children had to be saved— from camps, from laboratories, from Purifiers—”

A scream tears through the halls.

Magneto vanishes.

_They came, as we always knew they would again._

Someone did come here. The government? Purifiers? They didn’t wreck the place, but maybe the evidence is buried in the dust and paint peelings. Lia backs out of the study and into the foyer, missing the light and warmth of the place when she came in.

Someone destroyed that. On purpose.

She tries to turn towards the door, but she’s disoriented, gone the wrong way because she’s facing the elevator, and suddenly Jean is in front of her: but she’s older, her hair is long and her eyes are black and there’s a wild light coming from her and she’s _screaming—_

Lia screams too, backpedaling the right way this time, stumbling out the front door and onto the stoop.

Outside, it’s quiet.

One of these days, she’s going to leave this house when she wants to, instead of running away from ghosts that have yet to be anything worse than frightening.

As Aragorn said, _it is not this day._

The moon has come out, setting the thin layer of frost aglow, and Lia tries not to slip on the walkway.

Magneto.

She talked to Magneto. The ghost of an infamous terrorist shouldn’t be, you know, _cool,_ but it is a bit. She shouldn’t listen to anything he says, on the grounds of him being a terrorist, but— _fold yourself away to keep them happy…_

He’s _right,_ isn’t he? Isn’t that what she was contemplating doing?

But if he’s a murderer, does he lose the ability to be right? Is he just drawing her into a scheme? He tried to kill a lot of people— that was the end result of his logic. She’s never heard of whatever incident they were talking about, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The media is only part of the truth, _history_ is only part of the truth: she knows that much. Maybe no one ever found out what happened, or maybe the government at the time tried to cover it up. 

The current government wouldn’t. They’d use it as an excuse. Lia doesn’t follow politics much, but she knows what it means when the president says they’re going to keep America human.

She’s still buzzing with questions as she makes her way back to her street. The spot by the window hasn’t been disturbed, and she slides back in. It’s only been two hours since she left, but it feels like two lifetimes.

It takes another hour to fall asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone had a happy New Year!


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Graymalkin house has shown no signs of ghosts, entities, or hallucinations so far this morning, despite her shouting things like “Hello!” and “My name is Asheleigh Liyun Grant and I would like to speak with you!” and, for good measure, “I’ll have you know I graduated at the top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Qaeda and have over three hundred confirmed kills,” just to see if anything will call her on it.
> 
> Nothing does. 

Friday morning announces itself to Lia three hours later via a slammed door and a shout.

“Liliana Abigail Sidner!”

Liliana: not good.

Liliana Sidner: really not good.

Liliana Abigail Sidner: potentially apocalyptic.

Lia sits up slowly, trying to channel as much innocence as she can. “Yeeees?”

A muddied and dusty boot lands on her floor, closely followed by its mate. Her mother stands in the doorway, looking like she wishes she had more to throw. 

“Did you leave the house last night?”

“No?”

“Care to say that with a little more confidence?”

Her mom’s hair is sticking out at all angles, her arms are crossed, and there are bags under her eyes. Anger is all over her, but is that— is that fear?

It’s an improvement over sadness.

“I wanted to go for a walk,” Lia mumbles. At least this lecture means she didn’t dream the whole thing. 

Aaaand there’s her father. Joy. “So you decided to go out the _window?_ ”

“Well I didn’t want you to… react like this.” She flops back onto her bed, pulling the blanket back over her face, in the hopes that they’ll magically go away. 

They do not.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” Her father’s voice is not muffled by the blanket at all. “If something had happened, we’d have no idea where you were, or when you left, or if you’d been taken or lost or— you can’t just go sneaking around town on your own, especially with that mutant gang in the area!”

Maybe that part is true. Lia can only prove she’s a mutant with some time and concentration, if said gang is looking for humans.

_You’ll know when they’re hurting._

“They aren’t anywhere near us! And for all we know it’s just a group of mutants that decided to hang out together. Facebook posts are always exaggerating.”

“Oh, look, Dave, we have an expert here. Where the _hell_ did you go?”

“For a WALK!” it’s getting too warm under here, but to come out would be to concede defeat.

“Your phone stayed in one place for _quite_ a while!”

Lia splutters, pulling the blanket down again. “You were tracking my _phone?_ ”

Her father does not acknowledge this violation of her personal rights. If that is a right. It probably isn’t. The government and also Tim Cook are probably tracking them as well. “What were you doing on Graymalkin Lane?” he asks. “Meeting friends? Party? Drugs?”

Ouch. “You know I wouldn’t do that!”

“You’ve been acting weird for weeks, Lia.” He shoots her mom a look when she takes another breath. “We just want to know what’s going on. I know things haven’t been easy, but you can talk to us. We want to help.”

 _I’m a mutant._ The words are on her tongue, and she wants to let them out. Wants her parents to take care of everything, so she doesn’t have worry about it. So she doesn’t have to try and get answers from ghosts. But if she tells them, they’re going to panic, especially right now, especially after Ellie. They’ll be keeping a very close eye on her, they might send her to… to mutant therapy, or all sorts of things, they don’t trust mutants, they’ll worry about her joining a mutant gang—

She doesn’t want to tell them. She wants them to just know, and be fine with it.

She wants them to ask her. 

But maybe not yet.

Maybe when things have calmed down. And after she’s found out what happened to the Xavier Institute. When she’s good enough with her powers that she’ll know how to approach it. 

So. “Ashe and I wanted to see if that house is haunted.”

They frown in tandem. “Ashe was with you?!” Her mom is half asking, half yelling. 

“No.” She’s mad at Ashe, yeah, but she doesn’t want to get her in trouble. “No, we checked it out the other day, but I thought, maybe at night…”

“Which house is this?”

“You know that big abandoned house at the end of Graymalkin Lane?”

Her dad blinks a few times. “The… the… yes, okay.” Both her parents have blank looks on their faces for a moment. Clearly they need to pay more attention. It’s not like Salem Center is a big town.

“Well some kids at school were saying it was haunted," better they think that then they went after a teacher's house, “so Ashe and I went to go take a look. We didn’t go _in,_ we just sort of walked around the outside, but we didn’t see anything. And I thought, maybe at night, you know… there’d be ghosts.”

They both stare at her like she just announced her intent to convert to Scientology.

“Ghosts,” her mom repeats.

“Yes?” 

Her dad’s lips are twitching, betraying his angry expression. “Did you find any ghosts?”

How would they react if she said yes? “No.”

“And did that _surprise_ you?” Her mom doesn’t know whether to believe her, that’s obvious. She probably thinks there’s a secret drug den, or a strip club, because she reads too many parenting Facebook groups when she isn’t too busy being sad.

“There could be ghosts. Lots of people believe in ghosts.” This isn’t really the point Lia should be arguing, but she argues it anyway. “It was worth a shot!” oh God, she’s about to cry. That’s embarrassing.

“Jesus Christ.” Her mom holds out her hand. “Phone.”

“What?”

“You’re grounded. At least through the weekend, maybe the rest of the week, depending on how I feel. No phone, no laptop, no tablet, no tv, no friends’ houses, no friends here, certainly no ghost hunting. After school you will go to the Grind Stone Cafe and work on your homework, where I will pick you up at three forty-five _sharp.”_

“School?” Lia repeats. “You said I could stay home—”

“If you’re brave enough to go ghost hunting in the middle of the night then you’re brave enough to go to school,” her dad says.

“What if I need my laptop for my homework—” 

“Then you can use mine. Luna will tell me if you’re late to the cafe. Now get up— school starts in forty minutes and I guess I have to drive you.”

“ _Ugh!”_ Lia pulls the blanket back over her head, only to have her father yank it away, ball it up in his arms, and take it with him as he turns towards the door. There's more sadness in his steps than there was when he came in.

“Get moving,” he says, and she rolls out of bed looking as sad and pitiful as she can manage. Neither her mother nor her father seems moved to pity, but at least they aren’t making her walk three miles to school, so she follows them into the kitchen. She’s fully awake now, buzzing on half-energy, but she only got about four hours of sleep and it’ll hit her eventually.

At least at school she’ll be able to tell Ashe everything that happened.

She survives first period English and half stumbles into the gym locker room, only to find that they’ve moved to the health classroom. Maybe that makes sense, if the gym is like, a crime scene or something, but it’ll be a lot more difficult to have a whispered conversation in the individual desks there. No matter. There's still lunch. Ashe will pay attention and talk to her again—

But by the time the bell has rung, Ashe isn’t there.

Coach Dell puts on _Space Jam._

They must have been watching it for the last couple days, because it he starts it partway through.

Lia keeps watching the door, in case Ashe is just late, but around the part where things start to look bad for Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, she gives up and goes back to her notes. She writes down as much detail as she can remember, hesitating over Magneto’s words.

_If you empathize with that fear you might start to think it just._

But he’s wrong, isn’t he? Humans are wrong to think of mutants as evil, but it’s not wrong to be wary of powers like Shawn’s and Ellie’s. And if Magneto tried to kill enough people for it to count as genocide, then it’s not wrong to be scared of _him,_ even if he’s glad he didn’t do it. And he felt…

If what she felt really were his emotions, then he truly feels something about it, and she doesn’t know _what_ to do with that.

How did she feel them, anyway? His feelings? The whispers in the hallways? Those could be other ghosts, not strong enough to put in a personal appearance, but—

_Ugh._

Maybe she should have watched more horror movies. Maybe one of them has an answer. And isn’t that a heady thought? She’s seen _ghosts._ She’s seen what so many people are afraid of, and look at her, handling all her shit, only spontaneously crying a few times. And look at her, navigating the emotional hallways of high school, stress and excitement and lust and love and bleak sadness all over everything and still able to find her classroom.

For now.

As usual, there’s a decent amount of apprehension leading into Crown’s room. Everyone’s laptops are already out, and Lia groans.

“I don’t have mine,” she says, when her teacher hands her a worksheet.

“No matter.” 

And that’s how she ends up hauling the gigantic AP US History _and_ Government textbooks to her desk with her.

She hesitates over the history one, checking that everyone else is busy on their computers before she flips to the index. There are only a couple mentions of Magneto ( _see Lehnsherr, Erik,_ ) which seems _weird_ since he was a pretty dramatic public figure for at least a couple decades. The longest section on him is only two paragraphs, referencing an escape from a government prison in the seventies and his attack on the Sentinel program. Later, he collapses a building in protest of a mutant registration bill.

Xavier, Charles has no entries. 

Looking up _mutant_ doesn’t tell her anything she hadn’t already learned from the internet. Existence first publicly acknowledged by the American government in the seventies. Registration. Brotherhood. The X-Men are mentioned, though what they do is never really specified. Mutant registration, mutant cure, Purifiers exist. It only takes up two pages, and it is not helpful.

She’s not sure what she expected.

After a moment of resting her head in her hands and contemplating total despair, Lia picks up her worksheet. It takes about five minutes before the open book starts to look like a really nice pillow, and she wonders if she could get away with a nap.

* * *

She’d texted Lia about what she’d found online, but hasn’t gotten a response. Fine. That’s… unusual, but fine. Maybe Lia’s at school, and is actually following the no phones rule. Ashe won’t get stressed about it until tonight. She’ll text back. Even if they’re not friends anymore, it’s not like Lia would have given up on the house.

And even if she has, Ashe hasn’t.

She’d gotten permission to stay home from school again, both her parents are going to be out of the house until at least five, and she brought lunch.

The Graymalkin house has shown no signs of ghosts, entities, or hallucinations so far this morning, despite her shouting things like “Hello!” and “My name is Asheleigh Liyun Grant and I would like to speak with you!” and, for good measure, “I’ll have you know I graduated at the top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Qaeda and have over three hundred confirmed kills,” just to see if anything will call her on it.

Nothing does. 

“That’s twice now you’ve only showed up when Lia’s here,” she says. “What’s she got that I don’t?”

It’s a rhetorical question. This is a mutant school, and Ashe is not a mutant.

But that doesn’t mean she won’t be useful. There are papers in the office, and a lot of rooms they haven’t even looked in.

She’ll go through it systematically.

The first floor is straightforward enough. The hallway to the right is full of bedrooms, and rifling through papers, photos and books is enough for her to find names. There’s Piotr, grade eleven, who she thinks must be the boy with the metal skin since he’s in most of the photographs. There’s Bobby, who doesn’t have any schoolbooks in his room but does have some college brochures on his desk— and either a cross-dressing habit or a girlfriend who was allowed to sleep in his room. Down the hall is Marie, grade twelve, and Kitty, who is in the same in-between state as Bobby. The room closest to the side door doesn’t look like a student’s room at all: it’s slept in, but there aren’t even any pajamas. The only personal touch is a box of cigars.

Nathan, grade three, has a picture on the wall of a tiny bespectacled Indian boy sandwiched between a man and a woman. It’s captioned “♥️ Mommy and Daddy love you ♥️”. A stack of letters have been given a place of honor in the middle drawer of his desk, and Ashe reads them with the prickling guilt of snooping through someone’s diary.

_…I saw Annie’s mom at the store, and she was proud of how much you’ve improved!…_

_…Mopsey peed all over the carpet, I think she misses you…_

_…Anaaya said your name a few times today…_

_…Professor Xavier told us you haven’t melted any silverware or cups in nearly two weeks…_

_…We’ve put a picture of your bullseye on the fridge. Your father says that if you can acid-spit the target at twenty paces he’ll buy you a new Gameboy for your birthday, but between you and me, we’re going to do that anyway, so just do your best!_

It’s the first sign of parental involvement so far. Ashe looks back at the photograph.

There are no bodies in this house. There are, to her knowledge, only three in the yard. If little Nathan didn’t die here, then what happened to him? Did he find his way home?

A couple of the letters are still in envelopes, addressed to Nathan Gupta, 1407 Graymalkin Lane. The return address is in Connecticut, and after a moment’s consideration, she puts one in her backpack.

There are a few more young kids roomed near the older ones, and then there’s the lounge they’ve already gone through. Then the wing of classrooms. The computers could be a trove of information, if Ashe had a way of transporting them in all their bulky early-2000s glory— but they might also be nearly empty. There’s no trace of the school online, so they must have been careful of how they stored information. She looks for papers instead.

Most of them are normal assignments, like the ones she’s avoiding right this moment. Johnny Proudstar has some really insightful things to say about mitosis, and for a second Ashe contemplates sneaking the worksheet out with her, but that’s still cheating.

The elevator doors face the study, and there are both up and down buttons, but the only basement door Ashe can find leads to a lower level of the pantry. There’s plenty of food so molded that she worries it might give her CIRS if she looks at it for too long, but there is no sign of the elevator.

So where does it go?

There’s nowhere to go down, so maybe she has to go up. The main stairs are thick with dust and fallen paint flecks, but they _look_ stable enough. She puts a foot on the bottom step, and it doesn’t break, so she cautiously tries the next. And then the next. Warm air from anxious breaths is diverted by her mask to her nose, but Ashe doesn’t dare let go of the railing to wipe away the resulting snot until she’s on the landing. 

There are more bedrooms up here— some of them must have been teachers’ rooms, unless teenagers in 2008 were fans of Khaled Hosseini, James Patterson mysteries, and… capes? One room has more than one cape in it, along with some pictures of a desert country. Africa? Arizona? Saudi Arabia?

One book doesn’t have a name on the spine, and Ashe takes it off the shelf. 

“Please be a journal, please be a journal.”

It’s not a journal, but a photo album. Weighty, either leather or fake leather, with a Goodwill price tag in the upper corner. A handful of pictures fall to the floor when Ashe opens it.

“I’m sorry.” She’s pretty sure nobody’s paying attention to her, but there’s always a chance that whatever’s here is just observing from a distance. “I’ll put them back, see…”

The fallen pictures are mostly of Jean Grey, the white-haired woman, and a boy in red glasses. Grinning awkwardly in graduation robes, at the Statue of Liberty, in Washington DC, and somewhere tropical. A little orange date is printed in each corner— ‘85, ‘89, ‘95, ‘99— but there are no notes on the back. 

Ashe brushes them off carefully with her sleeve, and opens the album to return them. But they don’t have designated sleeves: there are another twenty-odd photos stuffed into the front, like someone meant to sort them out and never got around to it.

The top photo is the three of them, plus Hank McCoy, gathered around a bald man in a wheelchair. Under it is Jean Grey kissing the cheek of the man in sunglasses. Then Jean Grey and the white-haired woman having a snowball fight. Then the wheelchair man dressed in a lobster costume, beaming at the camera.

That must be Charles Xavier. 

On his grave portrait, in his journal articles, he was distant. Serene.

Looking at him in a lobster costume, it suddenly hits Ashe that he was _real._ Not a figure missing from history books, not a ghost story, not a legend. They were all real. People lived here, slept in this bed, took pictures, had favorite books and clothes, not knowing that a fourteen-year-old human was going to go rifling through all of it years later. 

She takes a careful photo of a few of the pictures, including the lobster one, and then tucks them back in the album.

They were real people, and they’re missing, and they didn’t bring their things. She’s snooping, but she’s snooping, in theory, to help.

How is she going to help?

She has no idea.

But she goes to the next room anyway. This one has been cleared out, save for a few cardboard boxes in the closet: they haven’t been taped, so Ashe shines her flashlight into the top one, and pulls out a copy of _The Tipping Point._ The name _Scott Summers_ is written neatly on the inside flap.

Ashe closes the box again, and leaves. 

It’s one thing to go through someone’s stuff when they’ve just left it around, she reasons. It’s another when it was packed away by a grieving friend.

A few more students lived upstairs— younger ones, mostly— and the rest of it is classrooms, though some of them do not look like that was the rooms’ intended purpose. Assignments are half-graded. There’s a sweater draped over one of the desks.

“This is a little creepy,” Ashe says aloud, even as she marks them down on her crude map.

She only glances in the bathrooms. Unless the toilets were cleaned right before they were abandoned, she does _not_ want to see what grew in them.

Lunch she eats on the front porch, pulling her mask down under her chin and staring out at the drive. Some orchestral song is stuck in her head, but she can’t remember how it begins or ends, or even what it’s from— just a few bars, over and over. 

By habit, she pulls out her phone, but of course there’s still no service. She starts a game of solitaire just for something to do, and chews the rest of her sandwich as fast as she can before going back inside.

The last bedroom she explores is on the first floor, behind an unobtrusive door near the study. There’s a bookshelf full of the kind of books everyone likes to show off but no one actually reads: Greek philosophers and Herman Melville and poets and T.H. White. _On the Origin of Species_ and medical textbooks and things that might bore Ashe to death faster than any ghost could kill her.

The room also has an attached bathroom, with a low sink and wheelchair bars in the shower.

Was this Xavier’s room? 

He’s dead. He died early enough to get a grave in the yard— and yet his things are still in his room, not packed away like Scott’s.

Maybe no one could stand to do it. Like how Hanna’s room is still untouched at the Sidners’ house.

Ashe has spent too long justifying her snooping— no, not snooping, _investigating—_ to turn back now. So she makes her way through the closet (lots of sweaters and khakis, a few suits, all of which _reek,_ ) and examines each book in case one of them is hollow or there’s a secret lever to a hidden room. At first she thinks that a bookmark had been left in _The Once and Future King—_ but when she opens it, she finds photographs instead. One is of two young men, their features mostly lost in the soft blur of an early color photograph. Behind that are photos of a man in a helmet clipped neatly from a newspaper, articles and captions not included.

Ashe studies Magneto’s face, comparing it to the men in the photograph, and her memory of the men in the library. She never saw Charles’s face, but the other man’s was clear. It’s obvious, seeing them side by side, that they’re the same person.

The back of one of the photos says _CX, EL, 1962._

Well. That’s. That’s certainly. Okay. She’d _wondered,_ but only in the abstract way she’d wondered about like, the weirdly romantic story arc of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson’s friendship. She hadn’t actually thought that the men from the library were. Well. The great peacemaker and a terrorist.

Was Xavier supporting him? Were the X-Men supporting him? They couldn’t have been. The X-Men were always fighting the Brotherhood. Turf wars, or however the news spun it. The mutant with laser eyes in a train station. The fight on Alcatraz.

“That must have been a _really_ bad breakup,” she says.

But Xavier kept his photos.

Her phone chimes, telling her that it’s three thirty. Right. Okay. She can spend another half hour rifling through the papers in the study before walking back home. And then she’ll shower, and pretend her phone had died if her parents ask where she’s been. 

And then she’ll charge it and call Lia.

* * *

The Grind Stone Cafe has been owned by Luna DePaula for as long as Lia can remember, which, she realizes today, doesn’t actually mean that Luna is old.

“One shot of espresso,” Luna says, sliding her a cup. “Since you look like you’re about to pass out. Don’t tell your mother.”

Lia sighs, but takes the caffeinated hot chocolate. “She’s asking you to spy on me, isn’t she.”

“I’m told you’re to be doing your homework the old fashioned way. So, look busy.”

There are worse places to wait. The cafe is small, but warm, with big windows covered in fliers for all sorts of events and causes— Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE, Stop the Sentinels. Small rainbow and trans flags are taped in the corner, big enough to catch the eye of those looking but small enough to not provoke a fight. 

Lia opens up her math textbook and stares resolutely at the page for about a minute before her eyes are back on the walls, looking at all the pictures of current and former regulars, interspersed with whichever musicians Luna is feeling at the moment.

“That doesn’t look busy,” Luna says, but Lia’s eyes have caught on a photo near the back.

“Who’s that?” she asks, pointing.

Luna glances at the wall of photos behind her. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“The… fourth picture from the top right.” Surrounded by this much political paraphernalia, Lia’s afraid of saying _the black woman._ Or is it worse to _not_ say it? Even asking the question is probably bad, but she’s sure that’s the woman who she’d seen in the Xavier Institute’s science classroom. How many young women have hair that color? In this picture it’s spiked into a mohawk. 

“Oh, they used to be some of my regulars. That’s Dani—” she points at the Native American woman on the right— “and… oh, what was her friend’s name. Aurora? Something like that.”

“Cool hair,” Lia says.

“Mm. Yes, she was very… cool.”

“Doesn’t sound like you liked her.” Lia tries to pry without looking like she’s prying, though she isn’t sure she’s very good at it. But Luna doesn’t seem to notice, coming out from around the counter with a wet rag and starting to wipe off the tables.

“Oh, she was alright. Dani and I— well. I asked her out, and she tried to set me up with her only other lesbian friend, so that wasn’t particularly awesome.”

“Oh. You didn’t like her friend?”

“She was fine.” Luna laughs. “Gosh, I’d forgotten about that. That was a weird time.”

“When was it?”

Luna shrugs. “Fifteen, twenty years ago, maybe? Not too long after I started working here, but before I took over. A lot of mutants came through at the time.”

Lia tries not to sound hopeful, or afraid. “Mutants?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess Sentinel Services and the NIMBY folk chased them all out of town, but there was a good handful for a while. The government will tell you that mutants are hugely dangerous, but what they won’t tell you is that there have been mutants living peacefully along with humans for as long as mutants have been around.”

“I know,” Lia says, trying not to look like she’s backpedaling. “I wasn’t trying to be judgey, I was just curious. I never hear much about mutants outside of, like, the news.”

Luna scrubs determinedly at one of the tables. “Of course you don’t. Well, I liked them. Liked working in a place they felt comfortable in. Us minorities have to stick together, you know.”

“Yeah.” Lia isn’t sure if by _us_ she meant herself and the mutants, or herself, the mutants and Lia, referring to Lia’s religion, or if she suspects—

But would it be the worst thing, if she did? Between that and the _Stop the Sentinels_ poster, if there’s any safe adult…

Three kids Lia recognizes from school come in, with someone’s mom trailing behind. They stop in front of the counter, arguing loudly about what to order, and Lia looks back at her math. The caffeine did help wake her up, so at least she’s not going to be falling asleep on her books. Though she’ll have all weekend to finish her homework, if she does. 

She’s gotten a decent chunk of the problems done by the time her mom honks at her. Luna waves, and Lia mumbles a goodbye before stepping outside, shoving her pack into the Prius’s back seat before climbing in the front.

Her mom pulls away.

They’re quiet for the first mile.

A long reservoir that stretches from North Salem to Salem Center. Lia likes watching the light play on it as they go by. When she was a kid, she imagined someone water-skiing alongside the car whenever they went this route.

“How was school?” her mom asks, finally.

“Fine.”

Silence.

“How much homework do you have?”

“A bit.”

Silence.

Her mom sighs, swerving a bit to avoid a patch of ice. “Hey.”

Lia continues looking out the window.

“I know things have been… difficult, since Grandma got sick.”

“Yeah.”

God, Lia is such an asshole. She knows it. She can see exactly how her mom is feeling, has been seeing it the whole time, so why can’t she just be empathetic? Why can’t she stop being a jerk, and let it all be okay?

“I have been… well. I’ve had a lot of trouble, you know, processing her death, and I’m seeing someone to help me do that. I thought… that might be something you’d want to consider doing as well.”

“You want to send me to therapy?”

“I think it would be good for you to be able to talk to someone about how you’re feeling. Even if it isn’t your father and I.”

_When was I supposed to talk to you?_

Her mom is crying. Lia hates that, because she always starts crying as well— yep— here she goes, great, lovely. She tries to rub her tears off with her sleeve, but it doesn’t work very well.

“I just _miss her._ ” She tries not to. She tries to focus on the house, on Ashe, sometimes even on her classes, and carefully files all the things she wants to tell her so that once they’ve solved the mystery of Graymalkin Lane, once they’ve figure out how ghosts happen and how to talk to them—

Then maybe she can see Hanna again.

The car swerves again and for a moment Lia thinks that they’ve hit something, but it’s just her mom pulling over to the side of the road and giving Lia a hug. It’s the all-encompassing kid, Lia’s face smushed into her mom’s shoulder, but it’s good. It’s good.

“Am I still grounded?” she asks about ten minutes later, after they’ve gotten huge cry-prints on each others’ shirts and the world looks slightly more manageable.

“Yep.”

“Okay.” Lia rubs at her eyes again, and they drive the rest of the way home.


	7. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not since Tuesday, oh dear oh dear, no friends have ever survived such separation. My heart weeps—”
> 
> “Daaaaad!”

Ashe goes to Lia’s house right after breakfast the next morning, after she’s worked up her nerve and before she can talk herself out of it.

She practices her apologies as she goes up the front drive, trying to make sure there is one for all situations. Maybe Lia’s waiting for her to talk the first step. Or maybe she’s still mad— but maybe she’ll be too interested in what Ashe has learned to _stay_ mad. Maybe she’s figured everything out, and Ashe is going to need to deflect. Maybe she’s been upset about something unrelated this entire time. 

It’s Jon who opens the door. Normally, Ashe likes Lia’s dad, but this is the second time in a row he’s made that face when he saw her. The _oh god I’m going to have to disappoint you_ face. “Tragically,” he says, “Lia is grounded.”

Well at least that explains why she wasn’t texting Ashe back. Maybe Ashe should have gone to school yesterday.

But why is she grounded? Did they found out about the house? About her mutation? _  
_

“Can I talk to her?”

‘“No friends coming over’ is an implied aspect of _being grounded._ ”

There’s the sound of running feet on the stairs, something that would have made Hanna shout the Polish word for elephants, and then— “is that Ashe?”

“Lia—”

Lia sticks her head around her dad’s shoulder. “Please let her come in—”

 _“Grounded—_ ”

“Just for a minute? She wasn’t in school yesterday, she’ll need the assignments. I haven’t seen her since _Tuesday,_ Dad, c’mon…”

“Not since Tuesday, oh dear oh dear, no friends have ever survived such separation. My heart weeps _—_ ”

 _“Daaaaad!_ ”

Jon breathes out dramatically through his nose. “Fifteen minutes. That is it.”

“Thank you!”

Lia turns and sprints for the stairs, and Ashe gives Jon a somewhat sheepish smile before kicking off her shoes and following. Sarah is sitting at the kitchen table eating a yogurt, looking almost normal, and Ashe waves as she goes past.

Up until a couple months ago, the Sidners’ house was one of her favorite places to be. 

Once she gets to Lia’s room, they stare at each other for nearly thirty seconds, and Ashe opens her mouth to say—

“I’m sorry—”

“I’m really—”

They both stop.

“I’m sorry,” Lia says again, staring at her toes. “I was… being a jerk.”

And everything is okay again. “Me too. I’m not scared of you, I was just—”

“—Everyone was being all emotional—”

“—Really stressed—”

They stop again, and smile at each other, and then Lia flings her arms around Ashe’s shoulders, hiding her face in her neck. Ashe holds her back, trying not to smile.

It’s okay.

It’ll be okay.

“I went back to the house,” Lia says when she pulls away. “I’d have called you, but I got grounded.”

Even more of a relief. “I went back too. Why are you grounded?”

“Because I went at two in the morning.”

Ashe gapes. “You _what?_ ”

“I couldn’t sleep, and— I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time? I think it _was_ a good idea. Possibly. Maybe. Probably.”

“Did you see anything?”

Lia nods slowly. “Yeah. Did you?”

“Not at all, and I was there almost all day yesterday.” Ashe sits down on Lia’s bed, pulling off her backpack and digging out her binder. “I got a lot of notes, though. Found a bunch of papers, photographs, stuff like that. I think— I think, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m pretty sure those people in the library were Charles Xavier and _Magneto_. I’ve been doing some research—”

“They were.”

“Hmm?”

Lia sits carefully, as though she thinks Ashe is about to run. “They were. I saw… oh my _God,_ Ashe. I what it looked like when it was a school— I stepped in and it was a sunny day, and Jean came to talk to me, and I saw Magneto.”

“ _Magneto_ Magneto, or young-Magneto?”

“Both. He was apologizing for doing something that indirectly got Jean killed— apparently he’d tried to kill lots of people, lots of humans, I think, but the X-Men stopped him.”

“Lots of humans?” _Terrorist,_ Ashe reminds herself. She’d been thinking of him as the younger man in the library, wondering if the newspapers and blogs had misrepresented him. Maybe on purpose, to cover up the fact that he was just, like, fighting for equality or something. 

‘Plan for mass murder’ doesn’t… sound like a secret hero. 

“Yeah. He felt really bad about it, though.”

“Well. If he felt _bad_ about it.”

“He’d just been tortured!” Lia says, defensive. “For a long time, it sounded like.”

Ashe doesn’t want to start fighting again. The idea makes her human stomach— tucked away in her human body— roll a bit. “Who was he talking to?”

“Charles, Xavier, I think. But it was that disembodied voice we’d heard earlier, the one with the accent? And then…” she hesitates, picking at her bedspread. “And then Magneto talked to _me_.”

“He _what._ What did he say?” Ashe pulls her hands into her sleeves, in an attempt not to leave any traces of apprehension on Lia’s bed.

“Just talked about my powers a bit. And then he said that the house is empty because someone came for them. But it didn’t look like whoever it was made it past the front door, right? Or else there’d be more things messed up. Or maybe we just didn’t notice. Maybe what damage they did looks just the house crumbling.” Lia stands up again, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I dunno. It was weird. And then my parents made me go to school and my mom picked me up from the Grind Stone, and I think I found one of the mutants there, in a picture on the back wall? Her name was Aurora, Luna thinks. I’ll show you. But you said you went back— what did you find out?”

Ashe takes out the letter from Nathan Gupta’s parents. Lia opens the envelope carefully, holding the paper only on the very edges, while Ashe explains the photos, Scott Summers’s things all boxed up, the bedrooms, and Xavier’s room.

“I think he was the other man in the library. I can’t be positive, since we didn’t see his face, but there was a picture of them. I took a photo of it.”

“So Xavier and Magneto were… together at one point.” Lia starts pacing again. “They worked together. And were _together_ together. At least once. I guess it doesn’t mean they were in a relationship. I wonder why we can’t see Xavier, like the others. Maybe it’s something about how he died?”

“I don’t know.”

Someone bangs on Lia’s door, and Ashe jumps.

“Time’s up,” Dave shouts. “Lia, there’s some Polish work waiting for you.”

“One minute!” Lia yells back. “We have to go back, as soon as we can. I want to see if I can get them to talk to me again. See if I can figure out why they were willing to talk in the first place— Jean’s a telepath, maybe it’s how I was thinking when I got there or… I don’t know, it all seems so stupid.”

“It doesn’t.” Ashe wonders if the X-Men and the Brotherhood were really as politically different from each other as it looks like. It doesn’t make sense for mutants to just fight other mutants, does it? “I’ll do more research. I guess.” 

But when Ashe gets home, she doesn’t search for the X-Men. Instead she carefully closes the door to her room before scrolling through the photos she’d taken, buried six folders deep on her computer.

They’d seen Hank McCoy. And unlike Charles Xavier, who had a death date in 2006, there’s no sign that he’s anything but alive and well. He’d been a public figure, and it’s not as though they could misidentify the body.

She hesitates over his phone number.

Easy to pass off as a butt-dial, right?

She should be smart about it, should find a way to block her number, but if she doesn’t do it now she’ll lose her nerve. 

The phone rings, and she practices what she’s going to say— _is this Hank McCoy,_ just to see if he’s alive, because if he’s alive they’ll have to work from there—

“Hello?” It’s a woman’s voice, not a man’s, and Ashe tries not to feel disappointed.

“I’m looking for Hank?” she says anyway.

“Not me— you must have a wrong number.”

“Sorry.”

“Best of luck,” the woman says, and the line goes dead. Ashe tries not to be embarrassed. Of course he changed his number, if he wanted to disappear from the public eye. But also, how stupid would it have been to have a phone number and _not_ tried to call him?

Her door flies open, and she yelps, automatically slamming her laptop closed. “Brook!”

“What?” Brook says. “Are you looking at porn or something? I don’t care. Where’s my hair dryer?”

“I don’t use your hair dryer!”

“Yes. I’m _aware.”_ It’s as though Ashe said she hadn’t showered, or something. “But, _someone_ did, and it wasn’t me. Seriously, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Brook doesn’t close the door on her way out, and Ashe flops backwards onto the bed, groaning. Maybe this is all stupid. Maybe Hank McCoy really is dead. Or maybe he’s underground, or in hiding, or something. Mutants disappear. _Ellie_ disappeared, her social media quiet, and Ashe doubts she’ll pick up the phone. And she feels sick about that— she’s been chasing after some ghost story when Ellie is a real person, here, who probably needs help.

Maybe she’s fine.

It would be weird for Ashe to go looking for her, considering they’re not friends anymore. Her parents would probably be suspicious, wouldn’t they? But maybe not. Maybe Ellie is at home and perfectly okay and Ashe is worrying for nothing.

Oh what the hell.

She puts her shoes back on.

* * *

If Lia were here, she might be able to read the last few days on the Mcleans’ front walk. But to Ashe’s eyes, it’s perfectly normal. Large house near other large houses, nothing big enough to be considered a mansion like Xavier’s, but not shabby. Two car driveway. Recent paint. Big front windows. Ellie and Ashe had played on the tree out front— they’d made up stories of fairies in the grass and the flower petals.

The world had seemed so full of magic.

The real world has magic too— but it’s not the fun kind, Ashe thinks, knowing full well that it’s a pretentious thought.

Skulking about here is going to look suspicious, so she sucks it up and walks up the front porch. Maybe she’ll make up an excuse about classes, or something— if MRO Bill finds out she was here she might have to come in for another talk, but it’s not like they can throw her in jail for visiting a former friend, right?

Right. Okay.

She rings the doorbell.

It takes long enough for someone to answer that she’s started to wonder if she should just go home, but then there’s a creak from the other side. As if someone is looking through the peep hole, deciding whether to let her in.

Maybe that’s paranoia. 

She should have brought Lia.

Ashe inflates her cheeks and blows out slowly, trying to look innocent.

And then the door opens.

It’s been years since Ashe saw Martha Mclean up close, despite the fact that Salem Center is a pretty small town. Her hair has gone grayer. And she might have gained weight. Ashe immediately feels bad for noticing those things.

“Asheleigh?” Martha says, looking her over, as though there are literally any other half-Asian fourteen-year-olds in town.

“Hi, Martha.” It’s hard to smile. Martha probably hasn’t smiled this week either. “I, um. I was hoping to see Ellie.”

Martha actually looks up and down the street before stepping back to let Ashe inside.

She tries to read into the pile of blankets on the couch, the number of shoes in the shoe rack. But they could mean any number of things.

“Ellie isn’t here,” Martha says. “I’m sure you must have heard. What do you want?”

“I was worried about her.”

“Were you.” 

Of course Martha is suspicious. It didn’t occur to Ashe until now how Ellie’s parents might take this— she could be doing reconnaissance for a sneak attack against their daughter. They have no reason to think she wouldn’t; they haven’t known her for a long time. But Martha sighs a little, letting Ashe through to the living room.

“She’s not here?” Ashe repeats. “Where is she?”

“Getting help,” Martha’s voice is flat. “There are procedures. She’s fine.” Her face is very tight, and for a second Ashe wonders if she’s about to start crying, and then she realizes that she _herself_ might be about to start crying, because if one more adult looks at her and tells her she’s crazy and that everything is fine she’s going to lose her _fucking mind._

“Has she gotten in touch? Is there a way to get in touch? Her last memory of her class is going to be everyone being afraid of her, I’d just like to tell her, you know, we don’t hate her, or at least most of us don’t hate her. We know it wasn’t her fault.”

The walls of the living room are covered in pictures of Ellie. Some of them are new, or new-ish, like the one from middle school graduation, or the sixth grade musical, but there are some that Ashe recognizes from when she used to play here as a kid. There’s Ellie on the first grade camping trip, Ellie in a tutu— Ashe must have been there for some of that, but she doesn’t remember being in ballet classes. 

“Thank you,” Martha says stiffly. “I’ll tell her when I can. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

Ashe can recognize a cue to leave when she hears one. She can also hear what Martha hasn’t told her— she hasn’t been in touch. Martha might not even know where she is.

The Martha Ashe remembers had ripped the soccer coach a new one when he wouldn’t play her daughter in her favorite position. How is she just letting them get away with this? She’s a rich white woman from Westchester.

And still, her daughter was taken away. What hope did the rest of the kids in Xavier’s school have? The rest of the _country?_

“Thank you,” Ashe echoes. “I’ll, um. I’ll go. But please let me know if you hear from her.”

Martha doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t say no, and Ashe returns to the sidewalk. She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t even want to go to Graymalkin Lane, because everyone there is— is gone.

She’s not stupid. She knows why Lia wants it to be ghosts. Lia wants to see her grandmother again. But can’t she see how much more important it would be if those people were alive? If they could find a way to get in touch with them— surely they’d be able to find answers. Hank was in government, after all.

But if they are alive, then they must already know what’s happening. And they haven’t been able to stop it.

And Ashe has homework.

It’s all stupid. It’s all so fucking stupid. What is the point of homework, when her classmates can just be taken away? What is the point of going to a job, of saving for retirement, if society is crumbling and the environment is falling apart and there isn’t going to be a future to plan for? She’s supposed to spend high school preparing for college, to get a job, so she can do all the things people are supposed to do. Make a career. Have a family. Experience the world. But the world is falling apart, and how is she supposed to live with that? How is she supposed to act like anything matters? It didn’t matter what Ellie had done— they took her away anyway.

Ashe wants to scream.

* * *

Despite protests from students, the teachers do not see fit to cancel their pre-Thanksgiving tests, so the next few days pass in a blur of flash cards and study guides. Neither Lia nor Ashe has time to look into Xavier’s, much less go back.

Also, Lia is still grounded.

“This is stupid,” Ashe says, flipping through the bio notecards. It’s been her constant refrain as the three-day week drags on, and more notes are swapped. “When are we going to use this?”

“On the _test._ In an hour. Quiz me.” It’s not that Lia doesn’t agree with Ashe’s assessment. But her freedom is contingent on getting her grades up, and failing the bio test will not help with that. 

“Fine. Prophase.”

Shit. Prophase. “Spindle fibers break?”

“Spindle fibers from where?”

“The… membrane. No. The nuclear envelope.”

“Yeah. Cytokinesis.”

Shit. Shit. “Divides cells membrane?”

“Close enough.” It’s really a sign of how much Ashe was worried about their friendship that she gets through three more cards before saying, “can’t you do this yourself?”

Lia picks at her lunch. “It’s easier when someone says them out loud.”

“What? You had a whole book of German flashcards last year—” Ashe stops, clearly putting the timeline together, and Lia wants to sink through the floor and disappear. “Can you not read these?”

She shakes her head.

“Lia.” 

“I could read them when I wrote them out! I was very calm when I made them. But then the closer the test got, and the more my parents bugged me about it, the more stressed _I_ got, and I covered up some of them. And then my mom quizzed me last night and she’s still all over the place so now _her_ feelings are on them.” And now Ashe’s concern is on them as well. Ashe must realize that at the same time, because she quickly puts the cards down, shoving them to the corner of the desk for good measure.

A trace of something lingers in the air where they had been.

“That’s new,” Lia says.

“What?”

“Touch my water bottle.”

Ashe does, and when Lia moves the water bottle, Ashe’s concern and confusion stay on it— but it also lingers in the air for a second where the water bottle was sitting.

_You could track anyone—_

Lia shakes her head. “It’s getting stronger, is all.”

“So feelings are covering up what’s written?”

There isn’t a good way to explain it. It’s not that the words are being _warped,_ but it’s like trying to read something written underwater. The more feelings are added, the more the water ripples, until what’s left behind is illegible.

“Not exactly, but… yeah, more or less.” In for a penny, and all that. “It’s getting harder to take tests, too.”

“Shit, Lia.”

“I thought maybe I’d pretend to be dyslexic, but my parents know I’m not, and it wouldn’t help me. What I need to be able to do is just do everything on a laptop that isn’t a touch screen, but I don’t know how to ask for that without…”

A few students enter Mrs. Crown’s room, and Lia stops talking. “Can you please just quiz me.”

“Yeah.”

She makes it through the rest of the deck in time to get upstairs to bio, but when she finishes the test, she’s pretty sure it was not the results her parents were hoping for.

Still, she was able to read all but one of the questions, despite half the class leaving stress on them as they passed them around the room, and that itself is a bit of a win.

Behind her, Ellie’s empty seat sits like a warning: _this is what happens when if you fail._

Where is Ellie now? Being held somewhere? Somewhere like the detention facilities they’re opening on the border? Somewhere with a lot of mutants, in some sort of mutant hunger games as powers are left unchecked and untrained? Or are they all just drugged, all the time, to keep them from damaging anything?

She’s heard of collars that prevent mutant powers from being used. They must develop them there. Test them there.

Her powers are inconvenient sometimes, debilitating at others, but the idea of having the government force a collar on her to take them away is— is. Well. It’s not great. The only thing worse than her powers would be not having them.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been more than two weeks since they’ve been to the Graymalkin House, and it seems colder inside than it has been before. That’s the changing of seasons, of course, but Ashe can’t help but feel also feel like the house is angry at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aand we're back. I forgot that I had space in the story where I just wrote [HOLIDAYS HAPPEN HERE]. On the up side, we're finally back at the school. *jazz hands*

On the first day of December, the Grant family sets up the Christmas tree. The chocolate advent calendars comes out, and the furniture is rearranged to make space for everything. 

Every year, Ashe's father lobbies for them to do this the day after Thanksgiving, and every year he’s shot down. This is the compromise.

She loves set-up day. She loves the advent calendars and the weeks of chocolate. She loves unwrapping the ornaments she’d forgotten existed. She especially loves shoving Brook’s stuff under the couch because Brook had missed the clean-up deadline.

There’s an orchestral piece stuck in her head, but she can't remember what it's from. It’s sort of light and dance-y and makes her want to tip-toe step around the house.

“I don’t know what it is,” she says after a few seconds of humming, carefully laying out the next box of ornaments. At what point do they get to retire the ones she decorated in preschool? _“_ Maybe it was in an ad?”

Her dad gives her a funny look from his position amongst the branches. “That’s _Swan Lake,_ ” he says. “Is the tree straight?”

“It’s leaning a little left. How can it be _Swan Lake?_ I’ve never seen _Swan Lake._ ”

“What are you talking about? You’ve seen _Swan Lake_ five hundred times. You memorized _Swan Lake._ ” He wiggles out from under the tree, pine needles stuck in his hair. “That part you’re humming is the dance of the four little swans— you used to do that in the living room all the time. We even went to see it in the city one winter, you don’t remember that? There was an accident on the way back, we were stuck in a traffic jam for hours. It was the latest you'd ever stayed up.”

Ashe shrugs. She’s trying not to think about the city right now: it had been her paternal aunt’s turn to host Thanksgiving in her Manhattan apartment, and a week later, Ashe still hasn’t gotten over it. The apartment is fine. The city is whatever. But her cousins are supremely annoying: they alternate between acting as though Ashe is a backwoods hick who should stand in awe of their street smarts (as though it’s _hard_ to ride the subway, there are fucking _maps,_ ), a Token Racial Minority there to Boost Their Stats, or someone so rich and privileged that she could never understand how the Real People live (as though the Real People own multi-million dollar apartments in Manhattan. Give her a fucking break.)

Also, Taylyr had made a point of talking loudly about her two guy friends who were dating, sneaking pointed glances at Ashe the whole time. Either trying to get her to make a snide comment, because all people from outside the city are clearly homophobic, or— or, possibly, trying to call her out. Ashe doesn’t know which, and she’s trying not to think about it. She’d just sat there and eaten her potatoes.

They’d been a little dry.

“How old was I?”

“Four or five, maybe?” Her dad sticks his head into the kitchen. “Connie! When did we take the girls to see _Swan Lake?_ ”

Ashe has no memory of this at all. She doesn’t even think she knows the _plot_ of _Swan Lake,_ besides the fact that there are swans. Presumably at a lake. And one of them is black. Or at least wears black. Unless _Black Swan_ is totally unrelated? Her parents hadn’t let her watch that movie.

“What?” her mom steps into the living room, frowning at the tree. “I just checked with Sarah, and I was right, the latke party starts at noon tomorrow. Isn’t the tree a little crooked?”

It is. “It doesn’t look crooked,” Ashe says out of loyalty, but her dad is already back underneath it, fiddling with the stand.

“Do you remember when we took the girls to see _Swan Lake?_ ” he asks again. “Ashe doesn’t remember it.”

“Nine or ten years ago, I think. No— ten, it was in oh-eight, because it was right around the election, right? There were all those freaking Obama campaign people.”

They launch into a rehash of the 2008 election, and Ashe returns to the Christmas ornaments because she was four years old at the time and doesn’t have an opinion. She’s still not convinced this isn’t an elaborate prank: she was into _The Little Mermaid_ around that time, and she could still probably sing those songs if someone held a gun to her head and was like, _sing 'Under the Sea' or I shoot._ How would she have forgotten an entire ballet?

Funny to think that when she was supposedly learning _Swan Lake_ dances, Nathan Gupta was learning how to spit fire. The thought is giving her another headache, so she returns to the ornaments.

 _Ba-ba-baaa da-da-da-da-da-daaaaaaa_...

* * *

Lia had spent most of Rosh Hashanah barricaded in her room, eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to face her own emotions as her family counted down the last couple days of her grandma’s life. She’d spent Yom Kippur trying not to see her mother standing in the empty bedroom, carrying years of apologies. They had more or less skipped Thanksgiving, since Uncle Bill had been at Aunt Ruth’s parents’ house anyway. 

So now Lia’s staring down Hanukkah, unsure how she’s supposed to do any holidays at all without Hanna.

She’d sort of thought that the latke party would be canceled this year. Or at least, held somewhere else. It was only at Lia’s house because her grandma was there, and her grandma always made the latkes: Lia had never gotten the impression that her own parents were very good at it.

But her mother seems to have taken it as a personal responsibility. So.

Latkes.

And people.

So _many_ people.

Uncle Bill, Aunt Ruth, and their kids. Mom’s synagogue friends. A few neighbors. Ashe’s family. Enough children underfoot that Lia is worried for her house’s structural integrity.

“Think we’re too old to play?” Ashe asks, gesturing to where a very intense dreidel game is going down around the coffee table.

Lia isn’t sure, but it’s better to let everyone think they are than to admit that Lia isn’t playing because she doesn’t think she could read it anymore. “It kind of takes the fun out of it when you realize there’s nothing stopping you from just eating the gelt out of the bag. They split it all evenly at the end anyway.”

“But then you don’t taste the _victory._ _”_

That’s certainly how her cousin Kelsey seems to be thinking about it. The more chocolate coins she wins, the more stressed she is on every turn. The stress is following the dreidel across the floor as it spins, spins—

Gimel. Kelsey deposits her winnings into the space inside her crossed legs, smearing _relief,_ and everyone else groans.

“What is it?” Ashe asks. “You’re squinting.”

She doesn’t want to fight again. “Just practicing. The kids are very invested in dreidel.”

Ashe grins around a mouthful of latke. “If I’d played as a kid, I’d have been too.”

“Competitive, are we?”

“ _Very._ ”

Yeah. Can’t see a luck game without wanting to win it. Can’t find an abandoned house without wanting to solve it. Lia’s about to try and think of something loving yet sarcastic to say when she hears her mother say her name.

“—touch and go, teenagers, you know how it is—”

Lia turns to where Aunt Ruth and her mom are huddled over the stove. Her mother’s anxiety has been visibly spiking all morning whenever either of her siblings-in-law draw near, but Lia hasn’t yet figured out why. Maybe they’ve fought. Maybe she’s worried about the cooking. Maybe she’s just projecting her stress. 

She should be able to figure this out, goddammit. But there’s too much background noise in here, and the more people enter the room, the harder it is to see.

Lia has smiled at everyone who has come in the door, and they’ve all split off into groups to talk about whatever small talk is coming up. Sports or politics, is Lia’s guess, based on the agitation wafting from the small group in the dining room. The point is, she thinks her host duties should be over.

She can’t solve her mother, and everyone else is just _too much_ all in the same place.

Ugh. They don't have their finals until January, but the pre-break unit tests are coming up, and her classmates’ heightened emotions are going to be awful.

“Want to get out of here?” she asks Ashe, who promptly wipes surprise all over her napkin.

“What?”

Lia lowers her voice, trying to sound dramatic. “Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to steal as many latkes from the next batch as possible. I’ll go for the gelt. Rendezvous in my room, three minutes.”

Kelsey loses the pot, and groans in despair.

“Sounds good.”

She gives Ashe a head start. It’s not like anyone would _stop_ them leaving, probably, but if no one sees them go it’ll be longer before one of her parents shouts for her to come be social. Lia smiles at one of the neighbors, picking up the gelt bowl and a bag like she’s going to refill it, and then ducking into the kitchen. It’s not a lie if she actually does refill the bowl. No one asked if she was going to stuff her hoodie pouch while she was at it.

She returns the bowl to the living room, then turns away. _Look_ casual.

Her father and Uncle Bill are in conference at the base of the stairs, and they go suspiciously quiet when Lia approaches. But they don’t stop her, so she makes her way up the stairs trying to look as innocent as possible.

“I only got four,” Ashe says when Lia reaches her room. “They were going to notice.”

“’S okay.” It’s so much quieter up here. So much easier to see. Lia flops down on her bed. “What’dya want to do?”

Ashe chews solemnly. “Well, I’ve been reading about Magneto for like two weeks straight, if you want to look at that.” Pause. “I also haven’t finished this season of _Stranger Things._ _”_

Lia contemplates her options for a full thirty seconds before she dives for her laptop and opens Netflix. It’s the holidays. They don’t have to investigate ghosts on the holidays.

She’s able to maintain this attitude for almost half an episode, until Eleven runs off to join the other government-experiment-mutants, who are Not Like Other Mutants and thus Suitable Protagonists. Finals are coming up, and then the holidays, and right now their parents are all busy, and no one is making them study for finals—

Ashe has fallen asleep, and Lia pokes her in the side.

* * *

Getting out of the house is surprisingly easy. Ashe says, “we’re going to go outside for a bit,” and her dad nods once before continuing to be dramatic about baseball. Brook looks up from her phone to say “Can I come?”, and Ashe says, “Nope,” at which point her sister says “Can I head home?” and her dad says, “Yep.” Lia’s dad isn’t to be found, but her mom waves them off, which they decide to take as permission to go wherever they want for however long they want.

So they stop at Ashe’s house for her snow boots and face masks— and so that Ashe can speed-eat a bar of dark chocolate to fight off the test-induced grogginess— and then they’re off.

It’s been more than two weeks since they’ve been to the Graymalkin House, and it seems colder inside than it has been before. That’s the changing of seasons, of course, but Ashe can’t help but feel also feel like the house is angry at them.

Well. At Lia. Twice, now, it’s said nothing to Ashe when she was there alone. She isn’t sure Lia has picked up on that. 

“Where to?” Lia wraps her arms a little tighter around herself. “Xavier’s office? See if we can find, I don’t know, more records, or something?”

“Or see who shows up.” Lia said that they had been waiting for her when she came here last, and the time before that, Aurora appeared only a couple minutes after Lia entered the house. If that’s a trackable progression… “Where are they?”

Behind them, the front door flies open. The front door hasn’t moved.

Ashe wants to pretend she’s used to things like this by now, but that’s a lie. She jumped.

An old man is in the entryway. For just a moment, he stands alone, framed by a light that isn’t there.

“That’s Magneto,” Lia whispers. Several days looking up pictures and articles about this guy on the internet, and Ashe didn’t recognize him without the helmet. Carefully, half worried that the ghosts will notice, she reaches for her phone.

“Where is he?” Magneto asks. He isn’t shouting, but it still comes off as more of a command than a question. For a moment it’s as though he’s addressing Ashe and Lia, but other figures begin to converge around him. They don’t _appear,_ exactly: Ashe couldn’t have found the second between their being there and not. It's as though they were pulled from the air, and as though they they were never gone. A big man who looks like an advertisement for an all-protein diet. A young woman with a white streak in her hair. A boy made of ice.

It’s almost comforting to see Hank McCoy step forward. He isn’t frightening in the way that Magneto and Jean Grey are. Not unfamiliar like the others.

But is he really here? His face is more a blue smudge than any features.

His voice sounds different, too. “Why are you here?”

“Charles,” Magneto says. He starts to walk forwards, but the big man gets in his way.

“You gotta lotta nerve, showing up here.”

It’s clear this man doesn’t intimidate Magneto in the least. “Move.”

“Oh?” Shiny metal claws are growing out of his hands. “What are you gonna do to me?”

“I won’t ask twice.” Magneto’s hand twitches, and a doorknob explodes. Everyone jumps, Ashe included—dammit— and her fingers find Lia’s arm.

It’s not because she’s scared. She just wants reassurance that someone else here is fully alive. Someone is watching this— what is it, a memory? What would happen if Ashe or Lia started speaking? Would they respond, like Jean did?

She doesn’t want to find out.

Because a story is happening in front of them, and she wants to know how it ends.

The young woman takes a step back, hands going over her mouth, and Ashe flips her phone camera to video.

“What I will do is wait until I grow strong again," Magneto continues, "and then I will twist you up like a pretzel and hang you over my bedroom door.”

“Sounds like I should just kill you now, then.” The claws are almost— but not quite— at Magneto’s throat.

“Stop it,” Hank says. “Both of you. Logan, unhand Erik. Erik—”

 _“Erik?”_ the man called Logan repeats. “He’s _Erik_ now?”

He is ignored. “Erik, how do you know about Charles?”

Magneto scoffs a bit, and again tries to go further into the house. Again Logan moves into his way, and they stare each-other down. Ashe wonders who would win in a fight— surely Logan, if for some reason Magneto isn’t strong right now— and then she wonders if they’ve fought before. They look like they have. Like they’re remembering it.

“I felt him.” Magneto's shoulders slump a fraction. “In Virginia. Like he was…Passing by. I thought maybe it was just my imagination… but then I found Moira.”

“Is she okay?”

Now he looks annoyed. “Of course she’s okay. I can’t afford to have the police on my tail right now.”

“She wouldn’t have told _you_ where Charles was.”

“She didn’t have to tell me. I don’t need my powers to spot a liar, and I assumed the first thing she’d do when he showed up would be to call someone in your merry clubhouse to come and retrieve him.”

“If you think we’re just going to let you kill him again, then you lost your brains along with your powers,” Logan says.

_Kill him again?_

Magneto looks to Hank. “Can you make him move?”

Hank’s sigh seems to echo through the room, ringing in Ashe's head. And then, as if from all around them, a voice says, _let him in, Logan._

Magneto raises an eyebrow, and Logan steps aside, scowl intensifying. “Lay a hand on him and I’ll gut you.”

The eyebrow goes even higher, and Hank sighs again. “If you want me to kill him, page me,” he says, seemingly to no one.

 _No need,_ says the Voice.

“He’s not in his old room. He’s at the room at the end of the east wing.”

The words are barely out of Hank’s— well, Ashe can’t see his mouth, he doesn't seem to even have one right now, but they’re only just spoken when Magneto takes off at a half-jog down the hall. Lia runs after him, and Ashe runs after Lia, not even bothering to point the camera. He’s turning into more of a smudge the farther he gets from the main room, and some shadows that must have been students jump out of his way.

He stops in front of a door, reaching out to open it, though to Ashe’s eyes it’s already open. It's Nathan Gupta's bedroom, but now it's half stuck in time: parts of it are warm and clean, bland decorations lit with the light of the memory, and parts of it are a child's room covered in cobwebs.

There’s someone in the bed.

Distinct arms, legs tucked under a blanket, and a bald head. Like Hank, his face isn’t fully there, and his clothes lose focus around the neck.

Magneto doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss, dropping to his knees beside the bed.

“Charles,” he says. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself now that he’s here: one fist is pressed into the other palm. Is he shaking? He might be shaking. Charles reaches over with a perfectly clear hand and catches Magneto’s. “I watched you d—” It’s clearly not what he had planned on saying, because he nearly bites down on the last word. “How—”

“I don’t know.”

Magneto looks at Charles’s hand for a long moment.

Ashe lowers the camera, has another quick internal struggle about privacy, and then raises it again.

“I suppose I should have known. You couldn’t just die in the middle of an argument. You had to come back and finish it.”

“I couldn’t give you the last word,” Charles agrees. His fingers tighten over Magneto’s, and what they’re not saying is far louder than what they are.

 _Excuse me,_ Ashe wants to ask, _but what the ever loving fuck fuckity is going on?_ She turns to Lia and that’s when she sees another man in the corner, where a few of Nathan's drawings only half exist. No, not another man— Magneto, but younger. He’s got the worry lines of an old man, and his entire lower body is a brown smudge.

“You abandoned us!” he shouts at Charles. “You abandoned us all!”

The Magneto by the bed doesn’t seem to notice. “Even when I hate you,” he says quietly, “you’re a hard man to live without.”

“Where were you?” shouts the younger version. He shakes for a moment, caught in an earthquake no one else can see or feel, and then disappears.

“Oh, come here.” Charles pats the other side of the bed. “If you’re going to be here anyway, you could at least make yourself useful.” Magneto hesitates for a long moment before going around and climbing in next to him, two sets of legs making lumps under the sheets. Ashe thinks Charles is leaning into his side— it’s hard to tell, with how Charles doesn’t seem to exist quite in reality— and with a snort, Magneto wraps an arm around Charles’s back.

“You caught me at a weak point,” he says. “Don’t think it will give you an advantage later.”

“Please. You missed me. I’m sure you got tired of doing the moral lifting yourself.” Charles doesn’t sound angry as he says it. “You never have to wonder if you’re going too far, as long as I’m here to stop you.”

Magneto gives Charles’s hand a quick kiss, before letting it rest back down on the bed. “I did. Miss you. I tried arguing with your gravestone, but since it was incapable of shouting stupid opinions back at me, it didn’t help me polish my rebuttals.”

“Well,” Charles says, “I wasn’t in there anyway.”

“Mm.” They’re quiet for a moment. “Are you going to take it down?”

The whole building seems to sigh when Charles does. “I suppose I should, seeing as I’m not dead. But it doesn’t feel right, leaving Scott and Jean out there alone. Which is silly, I realize, because they aren’t there either. If Scott’s body exists anywhere, we never found it, and Jean never made it off Alcatraz. Ororo told me she and Logan sank her in the bay.”

“That wasn’t Jean,” Magneto says. “That was the Phoenix.”

“It was the best decision. Should anyone connect them, we wouldn’t want them to… dig her up. Try and weaponize what’s left.” Charles shakes his head, but only the shadow that might be his nose moves. “I still reach for their minds, sometimes. But I suppose I don’t learn. I still catch myself looking for Raven. And you.”

“It makes sense. You lived with them for decades.” Magneto leans his head on the top of Charles’s. “I have no explanation for me. Trying to catch me without the helmet?”

“You’re the one that schemes, not I.”

“Please. You never stop scheming.”

“The last six months would beg to differ.”

“Oh? I can’t imagine death would stop one of your plans for long.”

Charles taps a finger against the back of Magneto’s hand. His shoulders move with what might have been a bit of a laugh. “One of the younger students asked me if I was in Heaven. I didn’t know what to say— I didn’t want to upset his world even more than I already had by coming back.”

Ashe has one hand on her phone, one on Lia's arm, and it's taking a good deal of concentration to keep them both from shaking.

“I was never good at answering questions like that either.”

A little girl runs through the room. In comparison to the two men, she’s perfectly clear.

“Get out of my head.” Magneto doesn’t say it with any malice, really. He says it in the way that Ashe’s mom says _can you please throw out your college textbooks._ A request repeated so many times that it’s more ritual than anything else.

“You missed me in your head,” Charles says, and then leans back and gives Magneto a peck on the cheek.

“Didn’t.” But even as he says it, Magneto hold Charles tighter against his side. “What was it really like? Do you remember?”

The room goes smooth for a second, as though it failed to render. Ashe wants to ask Lia if she saw it too, hopes she caught it on video, but she’s afraid of making a noise, almost afraid of breathing, because finally, _finally,_ these are answers. Even if they don’t make sense.

Surely he didn't _really_ come back from the dead. He just woke up from a coma. People wake up from comas.

“For a little while, it didn't feel like anything,” Charles says. “I’d say it was like sleeping, but even when I sleep, I have a sense of what’s happening around me. Other peoples’ minds never really go away. But there was... nothing. And of course I didn’t realize there had been nothing until bits of other peoples’ thoughts started to reappear, and the oblivion started to ebb. I had no body, I couldn’t see what was happening around me, but I could see what other people saw when they were nearby. It’s a curious feeling, being nothing but a consciousness. I wasn’t entirely sure that _I_ was real, that I was not simply the Greys’ neighbors, but after some time I remembered that I was a person. Once I was able to move at will from mind to mind, and I realized that I wasn’t too far from Moira. I… I suppose you could say I hitchhiked there, to see if I could wake up that coma patient that we’d been discussing. And I could.”

What.

“A coma patient that looks exactly like you did?”

“Mind over matter,” Charles says. “I don’t really have an explanation. He didn’t look like this before I took over his body. But now… I even have my kidney problems back.”

Ashe’s mind is spinning, and that fucking song is stuck in her head again.

“Have you considered…” _That you might be immortal?_ Ashe hears the words, even though Magneto’s mouth isn’t moving in time anymore.

“Bad job if I was, since I’m still aging. I’d be like that man… what was his name…”

“Tithonus.”

“Yes. Him… I’d rather not face down eternity as a grasshopper. I imagine… I _hope_ that my mind will die when my body dies. Whatever Jean— the Phoenix— did to me, she somehow didn’t kill my body. Just somehow… made it non-existent." _What._ "The psychic power… I don’t know. My powers aren’t what they were, since I came back.”

“Mm. It’s going around.” Magneto snaps again, and a doorknob wobbles. “So you weren’t conscious, after you died? You didn’t see what happened?”

Charles crosses his arms. “If you’re asking me if I saw the part where you walked off arm in arm with the woman who had, for all intents and purposes, murdered me, then no I didn’t. But I heard about it afterward.”

The metal frame of the bed twitches a bit.

“I won’t apologize for it.” 

“Oh I’m aware. Every Yom Kippur, I get my hopes up.”

“Very funny.”

Another sigh. The roof creaks. “Let’s not, today. I’m back from the dead, and you might have powers again, whatever that will end up meaning. Let’s just…” Charles brings his hand up to rub at his forehead, and this time it’s Magneto who catches it. Charles leans a little more heavily. They aren’t talking anymore, and the moment feels slow. Stretched. It takes Ashe a moment to remember that she isn’t as frozen as they are. That she can move and breathe even as they linger.

 _Magneto killed people,_ she tells herself, even as she watches him cuddle— or at least, doing something cuddle-adjacent with— his arch-rival.

If Charles came back from the dead…

It’s as if the room glitches, for a moment— suddenly Magneto is at the foot of the bed, then he’s at the door, looking back to where Charles appears to be asleep. And then he’s closed the door, and suddenly he’s back in the bed, tapping out a faint rhythm on Charles’s shoulder.

“If you don’t stop thinking,” Charles says sleepily, “I’ll make you see tiny kittens everywhere you go.”

“I can’t imagine anything more frightening.”

“Well they won’t be scary at first. But eventually… eventually…”

“Go to sleep, Charles.”

Then Magneto is standing in the doorway again, and Ashe doesn’t know why she has so many feelings about that all of a sudden: loss and heartbreak and regret and joy, so much joy that she wants to go skipping down the hall whistling a jaunty tune. Then he’s back in the bed. Then he’s at the doorway.

He’s sitting in the bed again when the memory vanishes, the room going from warm and cozy to molded and cold.

* * *

Lia waits, but the room remains empty save for them.

 _Come back. Explain this,_ she wants to say. Tries thinking it louder, but no answer comes.

Ashe presses her thumbs against her temples. “So Charles Xavier isn’t dead. What the fuck. _What the actual fuck,_ I’m getting a headache again.”

“Only if we believe them.” _Charles, get back here and explain_ how.

That wouldn’t explain that weird blipping thing, and whoever Moira is. Maybe Erik was at another part of the Afterlife.

Because you can’t come back from the dead.

And you can’t have a ghost if you’re alive.

"I'm just going to..." Ashe pokes at her phone, going back through whatever she recorded. "They're not here."

"What?"

Ashe holds up the video. It shows the empty foyer, and then then the floor as they ran down the hall, and then... an empty bed.

"Maybe ghosts don't show up on video." Really, they should have tried this before.

"But they _did._ When I was recording, they were in frame."

Weird, but not the weirdest part of the day so far. “Maybe they’re _all_ dead, and haven’t realized it yet.”

"We saw them. We heard them. They were right in front of us. There's no reason they wouldn't show up on... unless..." Ashe starts pacing, sliding her finger back and forth on her phone. Probably skipping back and forth in the video, as though they'll just show up partway through. "Unless they were never here."

That makes no sense at all, but Lia would really like to go back to the _resurrection_ part of the whole ordeal. "Of course they were here."

“Lia. Think about it.” Ashe stops poking at her phone, and holds up a thumb instead. “If we take him at his word, Charles Xavier says his mind existed when his body had been destroyed.” She raises her index finger. “Charles Xavier is, apparently, a telepath.” Her middle finger. “Charles Xavier can _make people see things,_ isn’t that what he said to Magneto? He’d make him see cats? What if we’ve just been in his memories this entire time? He practically just spelled it out for us! He hasn’t been a ghost, he’s been in our heads!”

No. Lia shakes her head. Tries to think through the excitement Ashe is trailing through the air. “No. No, we’ve been seeing other people— we _talked_ to Jean, and Erik. And Jean is dead.” Though she’s without a body; perhaps she, too, came back? Can all telepaths do that? 

“Did we, though? Or did we just see his memories of them? It would explain why his seemed like a disembodied voice, why we never saw his face!”

“Because we don’t see our own faces in memories,” Lia says slowly. Just a bit of a nose. Some hair. “He’s in a wheelchair, so Aurora— Ororo? I think they said Ororo— looked tall, and earlier, when he wasn’t in the room, Hank—”

“He could have been in Hank’s head. Watching it from Hank’s point of view.” Ashe starts opening and closing the closet doors, as though she’s going to find Charles Xavier hiding in one of them. Relief and excitement are bright around her, and Lia tries not to cry.

“Maybe it’s still ghosts, but it’s only Charles Xavier. Maybe he’s just haunting the house.” He could be a ghost. There could be ghosts. She sits down on the bed that Charles had been in, ignoring the gross stuff that’s probably getting on her snow pants.

“Or maybe he’s not dead.”

“You think he’s just hanging out somewhere in this house? He’s not. If nothing else, I’d have seen his trails.”

Ashe shakes her head, pain spiking for a moment around her eyes. “Apparently, there's precedent for him dying without being fully dead.”

“Who knows if that conversation was even real?” Who knows if any of it is real? People remember things wrong all the time, and that’s assuming it’s not malicious. The idea of ghosts is easier to take than the idea of one man dropping images into their minds as they move around the house. She _saw_ Jean and Ororo and Erik and Hank and Logan. _She saw them._

“I’m just saying, there are lots of options. It doesn’t have to be ghosts.”

“Yes it does!” it slips out before Lia can stop it, and Ashe turns away from the closet.

“What?”

“If ghosts are real, then that means—” it sounds childish, and Lia looks down at her hands. “It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? If people aren’t really gone?” What gives telepaths the unique right to come back from the dead?

“They’re in Heaven,” Ashe says confidently, with just enough doubt at her fingertips that Lia knows she doesn’t really believe it. She doesn’t know where she herself falls on the concept of an afterlife: her parents had suggested to her that she could imagine whatever would make her happy, but uncertainty doesn’t make her happy at all. She can’t just decide things and then believe them—

Oh.

Isn’t that what she’s doing?

“What if they’re not? What if there’s nothing? What if they’re _still here?_ ” Christians are very firm on the point of there being _something,_ but in Lia’s mom’s quest to reinstill Judaism in her daughter, this is a topic on which little has been said.

“Listen.” Ashe rubs her forehead again. “Listen. I understand why you want to think that they’re here. I— I miss Hanna too. But it’s not making _sense._ And— and if there were ghosts, if ghosts were real, then why would we be the only one who knows? Why wouldn’t people come back for each other more often? Why would the only ghosts we’ve ever heard of be a few people in a school? People whose bodies are apparently in the San Francisco Bay? If you died, would you really want to just hang out in high school forever?”

It sounds like a speech she's been working up for a while.

“Maybe it’s the house.” In movies, there’s something special about locations. Burial grounds, that type of thing. “Maybe it’s something about the house.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Lee.”

Ashe is right. She _knows_ Ashe is right— if not exactly right about Xavier, then right about the options. Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true, but Lia—

She just wants to talk to her grandma.

“I know,” she says, furious that there are tears in her eyes. She’ll blame Erik’s leftover emotions for the fact that she’s now crying and can’t stop. Ashe sort of splutters for a moment before she sits down next to her, and that’s a testament of friendship, really: forget running into a haunted house with someone— true friendship is sitting down on a moldy, plaster-covered bed. Lia sort of curls into her, and she can feel Ashe’s arm around her shoulders, and it’s warm there, it’s comforting. “I’m so tired,” she says, trying and failing to keep the words steady. “I’m just so tired.”

There’s love around Ashe’s shoulder, and Lia sees it even when she closes her eyes.

“We can stop,” Ashe says. “We could leave this house be, and go back to our lives. Pretend it never happened.”

Just go back to being Lia and Ashe from last summer. Lia wants it. Wants days where they did nothing but watch TV and share memes and wonder if they’d be more popular in high school than in middle school. But they can’t, can they? Not with Lia’s powers getting stronger and mutants being pulled from school, if there’s any chance the teachers here can help with that. Not if— “Not if Xavier is alive somewhere,” she says. “What if he is and we’re the only ones who know?”

She hasn’t seen any trails, so where could he be that he’s survived for ten years?

_I had no body_ _… nothing but a consciousness._

But he was still only in one location. He had to _hitchhike._ And they've never seen a thing outside this house.

Unless they have, and just haven't recognized it, and if Lia lets that train of thought go much farther she's going to lose it completely.

But it was obvious. If she'd seen one of the ghosts on the street, they'd know. No feet, for a start.

“Yeah. Yeah, alright.” Ashe gently tugs her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get out of this room, and think. I’ve been through the whole house, there’s nowhere livable, no food, so he can’t be physically here, and psychically he’s been all over the house, although—” she pauses.

“Hmm?”

“I never did find where the elevator let out.”

“What?” 

“There’s a button for it to go down, but I never found any floor below this one besides the pantry basement, and there were no doors there.”

Lia hadn’t considered the elevator since she saw Jean screaming in front of it.

They go down the hall and stop by the elevator, frowning at the double doors. The button obviously does not work. Kicking at the doors yields nothing but loud bangs, although it does make Lia feel a little better.

“Maybe if we get a crow bar we can pry the doors open and crawl down the elevator shaft.” Lia has never seen an elevator shaft. But she has seen _Die Hard,_ and she assumes that's enough expertise as anyone needs. “Or we should get the remaining X-Men. They might know what to do.” They might know what to do about all of it. Charles. Ellie. Lia. She tries kicking the door again, and, what the hell— “Charles?” Silence. “Charles!” she shouts at the door, as though she’ll be able to wake him up. Or maybe bring his ghost back, make him give them some straight answers instead of vague memories and impressions. “ _Charles!_ ”

“Charles, here I come!” a child’s voice says: a blonde girl running down the hall. She turns a corner, and disappears.

“That’s not an answer!” Lia shouts after her.

“Maybe one of their phone numbers is still current,” Ashe says. “I've got pictures of them, at home. Tried to call Hank, but his number was disconnected."

“You called? Like, on your phone?” if someone catches her, if someone goes through her phone records—

“Butt dialing exists. I'd have said I did that. Anyway, then I deleted it from my call history.”

Right.

The alarm on Lia's phone rings: it's almost four, and the sun will be going down soon. If she's not in cell phone range soon she'll probably end up grounded again. And she can't be, if they're going to do this.

“C’mon," Ashe says, leading Lia back towards the door. “Let’s go find Charles Xavier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some family friends moved across the country recently, taking their latke parties with them. RIP, latkes, you will be missed. 
> 
> As always, thank you and much love to those of you who have commented : )


	9. Interlude: November, 2008

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An hour passes. Erik is staring at the ceiling, weighing the pros and cons of just getting up when his phone rings: it’s not far out of reach, but he calls it to his hand anyway. No caller ID is listed, but maybe it’s Charles, about to tell him what he woke him up for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A break from our regularly scheduled programming. I edited this chapter so many times and spent far more minutes than necessary doing a lot of Google Map searches and looking up sunrise time in New England in November. So I'm relieved to finally get to share it with those of you who have stuck it out with me here.

It takes Erik a moment to figure out what had woken him. The room is dark, the night is quiet, and he’d been dreaming of standing on the edge of the Dead Sea, salt between his toes and the wind’s voice in his ear.

_Charles?_

If it was Charles, it had only been in passing: there were no words left in his thoughts, and there are no messages on his phone. Considering how they last parted, maybe he was just checking in to make sure that Erik wasn’t in the process of any so-called diabolical plans.

It’d be nice to have the resources for diabolical plans. The safehouse he’s in right now won’t be safe for much longer. At least he can once again stoop to petty theft: he’d been happier to start a car six months ago than he had been when he figured out the trick as a teen. The years when he could move bridges seem laughably distant, and as each day goes by he becomes increasingly worried that he’ll never be able to do it again: he doesn’t know many people who lived this long, so he isn’t sure what, exactly, it’s supposed to look like. 

An hour passes. Erik is staring at the ceiling, weighing the pros and cons of just getting up when his phone rings: it’s not far out of reach, but he calls it to his hand anyway. No caller ID is listed, but maybe it’s Charles, about to tell him what he woke him up for.

He flips it open. “Yes?”

“Something’s happened.”

It’s not Charles. But he knows the voice. “Storm.”

There are no good reasons for the phone to ring at this hour. Especially when it’s someone who once electrocuted to death one of your most loyal minions.

Sorry. Comrades.

“What is it?” And what do they want him to do about it? What could possibly have happened that they feel the need to reach out to _him,_ of all people?

“Better to talk in person. Where are you?”

He assumes it’s a trap, but it might be one worth falling for. His last fight with Charles had, if anything, been less dramatic than usual: they’re probably overdue for a reconciliation. “Near Killington. Where are you? Where’s Charles?”

There’s a hiss of air over the line. “School’s compromised. Can you meet us at… Nathan there’s a map under the, thank you… Can you meet us outside of Greenfield in two hours?”

“Where outside of Greenfield? And where’s Charles?”

“Just call when you’re close.”

“Ororo.” If the school is compromised, if they’re desperate enough to call _him,_ when he’s only got a fraction of his powers and they all hate his guts…

“I don’t know where he is.”

Erik closes his eyes.

It’s two in the morning, and there are neighbors about half a mile down the road. If he steals their car now, it will be hours before they report it.

Nothing at the safehouse is worth packing. He’s out the door five minutes later.

* * *

The road appears deserted, but he can sense at least half a dozen vehicles around a bend up ahead, hidden in in the dark by dense trees and the remains of New England’s fall foliage.

Erik doesn’t bother pulling over before getting out of his car, leaving the headlights on. He can just hear the Green River, somewhere off to his left.

Sabretooth once dumped a body in that river. Erik wonders vaguely if it had ever been identified.

A strong gust of wind nearly blows his hat away, and Storm lands in front of him.

“They surrounded the house,” she says, forgoing a greeting. She looks more exhausted than Erik has ever seen her— and he’s seen her when the school was compromised before. He’s seen her looking better in fights to the death.

Or at least— almost to the death. He’s never been able to bring himself to really try to kill that girl he found in Egypt, who just wanted to be better. Or Jean Grey, who lives in his memory on Charles’s lawn, hands out, while they build a house together.

He’s never been able to bring himself to kill them, but he was willing to leave them to die.

“They surrounded the house?” Erik repeats. “How?”

“Charles was sleeping, they got past the security system— there were at least a hundred of them. We could have fought, but—” she shakes her head. “We had to get the students to safety. Charles went to Cerebro to turn them around, and Logan and I led the evacuation. Our plan worked: the children got to the cars, we all escaped with no trouble. Charles was supposed to either give us an all-clear, or arrange to meet us somewhere, but we’ve heard nothing.”

“You just left him?” Charles wasn’t strong enough for Cerebro. _Erik_ knew that. They should have, too.

“That was the plan. That was _Charles_ _’s_ plan.”

Of course it was. Idiots, the lot of them. “So why did we waste time driving here? We can go back and get him: even if he’s been captured, they couldn’t have gotten too far— you can _fly—_ ”

“That’s just it! Get him from _where?_ _”_

“We start at the school, obviously, follow the trail from there—”

“And where is the school, Erik?” There’s a half-wild look in her eye, and he’s reminded that she’s literally a force of nature. “Please tell me you know where the school is.”

Of course he knows. He built that house. He helped lay the groundwork to put Cerebro in the basement, back when Charles could walk and most of the world had never heard of mutants. “It’s—” _Where is it?_ “It’s—”

Storm’s face falls. “He did something,” she says. “He did something, and now none of us can remember where it is or how to get back. I’d hoped it was only us.”

Maybe Charles hadn’t been saying hello this morning after all. _“Why?_ Why would he do that?” He hadn’t done that to Erik in fifty years of opposing him. Why on earth would he do that to his friends now?

“I don’t know. He hasn’t used Cerebro since Alkali Lake. Perhaps he made a mistake.”

Erik gets a cold feeling in his gut that he refuses to identify as guilt.

“So you left him behind and now we have no way of finding him.” He curls his fist, intending to… what? Unlock a car at her? Find Wolverine and toss him around for fun? Erik isn’t sure he’s actually capable of doing that, and it won’t help, in the long run, to hurt the only other people who want Charles back.

“We did what we had to do to keep the students safe,” she says, voice colder than one of her storms. “I don’t think you have any leg to stand on when it comes to leaving Charles behind.”

 _You were supposed to keep_ him _safe,_ he thinks, but it’s not true. He and Charles were supposed to take care of Ororo, once upon a time. And Alex and Scott, Sean and Angel, Jean and even Darwin. All those mutants they’d lost along the way— all the young mutants on Alcatraz.

Raven.

He looks up at the sky. Still too early for the sun to come up, but the moon shines bright over Ororo’s shoulder.

Is this what they’re left with? The grand finale of decades of work and sacrifice? Erik, without powers and allies. Charles, missing, with his school reduced to vans of frightened children.

 _It wasn_ _’t for nothing._ It’s not Charles’s voice in his head. Just what Erik wishes he would say.

But Storm isn’t done. “I know you and he are, whatever you are, when you’re not trying to kill each other by proxy. But I’ve been at his side for almost thirty years. He’s my family. And I advise you to remember that, before you talk like you’re the only one that cares about him.”

Erik is about to answer that when Charles dies.

For a moment it’s happening in front of him: he sees the walls of Cerebro, he sees the whole world, and Charles’s _fearangerdesperation—_ Erik tries to reach out, tries to say _where are you_ and _we_ _’re coming to get you—_ but then the image shatters, like it’s breaking, like Charles blew apart in front of his eyes two years ago, and what’s left is only silence.

“No—” Erik lurches forward as if Charles is there to reach, but he’s in Massachusetts and the only person there is Storm. She catches him, or maybe he catches her: somehow, they land on the ground, sitting in shocked silence because he just—

He just died. In the basement of a house that they might never be able to find again.

There was a chess game. They weren’t done with it. Charles always likes to leave a game half finished. Says it’s because then he knows Erik will come back. Erik thinks it’s so that Charles can be alone with it to devise strategy.

No. _Liked. Said. Knew._

_Would._

Past tense.

He won’t do that anymore.

Erik has mourned Charles before, but that was when he had purpose. Rage. An army. A way to make the world pay for not having Charles Xavier in it.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to do it now.

There’s a burst of sound, and it takes a moment to match that to the sight of Wolverine charging towards them. A small group of older students are at his heels, and Erik will recognize them in a minute. He’s probably fought them enough. Is this a fight? Are they fighting? The students slow down, perhaps blinded by the headlights, perhaps shocked at seeing Erik and Storm almost holding each other on the ground.

Outside of Erik, she and Hank are the ones that would have known Charles the longest.

They’re what’s left. And Hank’s in Washington, and they’re—

Wolverine stops in front of them. Not fighting, then. “You felt it, too?”

Storm nods.

“Feel what?” one of Wolverine’s entourage asks. The girl who can walk through walls. What’s her name? That’s Bobby with her, from Alkali Lake. And Rogue.

She’s not wearing gloves.

“Is it the Professor?” Bobby asks. So that answers that question. At least Charles’s children didn’t feel this.

A burst of rock music makes Erik jump. Storm stands, taking her phone out of her coat. “It’s Hank,” she says, voice dull. “I should…” she flips it open.

Hank’s voice sounds like static from where he’s sitting.

“We know,” Storm says to Hank, and then covers her mouth. Walks a few steps away from them, talking more quietly into the phone.

“Know _what?_ ” Rogue asks.

“Charles is dead.” Erik tries out the shape of it. It’s familiar. _Charles is dead._ He’d told himself that every day for months, until he’d felt his mind again in Virginia. “He just…”

He can’t just sit here, looking like a useless old fool. Erik stands, ignoring the way his knees hurt. He tries to brush himself off, tries to think beyond the creeping dullness in the back of his mind.

Bobby is glaring. “How do _you_ know?”

“The Professor reached out to all of them,” Rogue guesses. “You three, and Hank.”

Erik is a little surprised Logan made the cut, but maybe Charles was short on people to trust.

He wonders if he reached Mystique, wherever she is.

He wonders if she’ll care.

Erik will find her. Somehow, after he remembers how to move, he’ll go find her.

“Yes,” he says. Was it just a minute ago they were still planning to rescue him? But people die. Everyone dies. His father, his mother, his wife, his daughter. At least in those cases, he’d been able to kill those responsible.

And if— no, _when—_ he gets his full powers back, he’ll do the same to whoever went after Charles. In the meantime—

“The house is really gone?” he asks. “No one has any notes, or flight logs, or…” what do the kids use these days? “MapQuest searches?”

Kitty shakes her head. “I left my laptop when we ran.” The kids are remarkably composed: but then, they’ve also been through this before. Maybe this is just one of those things that happens, a weird few weeks where everything occurs all at once, before their lives calm down again and everything goes more or less back to how it was. Before Charles comes back.

He did it before.

Storm snaps her phone closed with her chin, turning back towards them. “I told Hank to stay in DC.”

Clouds gather in the distance, blocking the moon, but her face is blank.

“Good,” Erik says. “If he can find out who ordered the raid, please do have him drop me a line.”

Storm and Wolverine look at each other.

“Even a broken clock—” Wolverine starts, but Storm glares him into silence.

“Right now, we need to get the students somewhere safe. See if there’s anyone on our trail. Once we know we’re clear, we’ll…” she spreads her hands. “We’ll figure out what to do next.”

Erik catches Wolverine’s eye, but Wolverine just glares back. Fine. He’ll have the time to win him over. Eventually, someone will pay for this.

He’s seventy-eight years old. Erik sees no point in breaking a pattern now.

“There’s some Brotherhood locations that are probably empty,” he says. “We have a nice set of caves near New York City.” They all gape at him, and he shrugs. “We didn’t all have mansions.”

“Is that… healthy?” asks Kitty.

“Isn’t that where you stashed the machine you tried to use to kill me?” asks Rogue.

“Well, they probably won’t go looking for us in a cave,” says Bobby.

“This car is stolen.” What is he doing? “I’ll have to dump it somewhere.” _What_ is he doing? But what else is he going to do, if not this? “Ororo, do you have space in your van?”

“Jesus Fucking Christ,” says Wolverine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Entering Part II: Increased Shenanigans.


	10. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What about the Guptas?” Lia asks, seeming to give up whatever pavement mystery she’d been trying to untangle.
> 
> “The Guptas?”
> 
> “We have their home address, from the envelope. They live in Portland, it’s not far.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't decide if this chapter and the next chapter should be smooshed together into one Mega Chapter, but I decided to leave them separate in the name of ~consistency. So in penance for missing last week, it'll hopefully be a two-chapter week.

It’s all very well and good to declare that they’re going to find Charles Xavier. Actually doing it is another matter.

If he’s not in the house, and he’s not buried in his plot in the yard, and they’re assuming he’s in the building, then, by process of elimination, he’s probably in the basement. Supporting this theory is the fact that there seems to be no way to get _into_ the basement. Hindering this theory is the fact that their search for someone who could tell them how to do it comes up blank.

Half the phone numbers in Xavier’s book are answered by the _your call cannot be completed as dialed_ lady. Others go to the voicemails of people with the wrong names, and the one person who picks up says “Sorry, I don’t have any debts, you all can stop calling me,” and hangs up before Ashe can ask if this is Carmen Pride.

On Tuesday afternoon, she and Lia wait at the Grind Stone. Brook is in late rehearsal for the Holiday concert, so Ashe had suggested it on the grounds that she wanted to see the picture of Ororo and the other mutant. She’s never been here before, and it feels almost daring to sit at the table by the window, so close to the flag stickers. Behind the counter, Luna is making their drinks, and Ashe tries not to stare.

She isn’t sure she’d have known Luna was gay if Lia hadn’t mentioned it, but maybe she would. It’s hard to say. She doesn’t know any gay adults. Or at least, not that she knows of. She probably knows some gay adults, just like, statistically, so she probably _isn_ _’t_ very good at noticing. But she should stop looking, because she’s being weird, so she turns to the list of phone numbers instead. Every number is crossed out, and she’d brought it along more for the illusion of productivity than any hope it would be helpful.

“So what now?” There’s a long moment of silence. “Lia?”

Lia is leaning against the window, squinting at the sidewalk. It’s the face she makes when she’s really trying to use her powers. The same one she’d made at the latke party, the one she makes now when there’s a slow moment in gym class, or someone wanders into their room during lunch.

It’s been increasing in frequency since their fight. Since Lia talked to a memory of Magneto.

 _What did he tell her?_ It’s not like she’s going to, like, join the Brotherhood, or something. Right?

So _what_ if Magneto is a mutant, and—if Charles is to be taken at his word—Jewish? Having two things in common with someone is not a reason to trust them. Surely Lia knows that. He tried to kill a lot of people.

Humans.

Which Lia isn’t.

Lia isn’t _human,_ and what happens if they find the X-Men and Lia decides she’d rather be with them?

Charles and Magneto were on opposite sides, and they clearly loved each other. Or something. But they loved _each other._ Lia doesn’t— Lia had said she had no more secrets, which mean her being both secretly queer and into Ashe is… probably not a thing. Which doesn’t matter. Ashe is just being dramatic.

Even if Lia joined the X-Men, she wouldn’t start seeing Ashe as her enemy.

(Right?)

“What about the Guptas?” Lia asks, seeming to give up whatever pavement mystery she’d been trying to untangle.

“The Guptas?”

“We have their home address, from the envelope. They live in Portland, it’s not far.”

Not far, but also, impossibly far. “How are we supposed to get to Connecticut without telling anyone where we’re going?” They could take a bus to the city, get a train to Hartford, then find a bus from Hartford to Portland, but that would take the better part of a day. Where would they sleep? How would they get back? Where would they tell their parents they were going? What would they do, just show up on the Guptas’ door and say… what?

What had she really been planning to say to the people on the phone?

“Also, what if they’ve moved?”

“The house was last sold in the early 2000s.” At Ashe’s look, Lia’s ears turn red. “I might have looked their house up on Zillow. _Anyway_ _…_ It’s only like eighty miles. That’s like, less than two hours driving.”

“Hot chocolate!” Luna hollers. The room is small enough that Ashe only has to take a few steps up to the counter to collect it, and it’s on the tip of her tongue to ask Luna if _she_ _’ll_ drive them to Connecticut, obviously as a joke, so that Luna will say no and then laugh and ask why they want to go to Connecticut, and Lia will say “no reason” and Luna will accept the non-answer and then say something like _well there_ _’s a secret bus that goes right to where you’re trying to go_ , or _did you know Ubers are free if you enter a magic password?_ Or maybe she’ll say “of course I can drive you to Connecticut, no need for me to know why,” and then she’ll actually look at Ashe and immediately understand everything about her and then tell her the gay secrets to surviving high school.

That’d be nice.

Instead of asking, Ashe sits back down. “But we can’t drive.”

“We could ask Brook? She’s supposed to drive you places, that was the deal when she got the car, right?”

“Yeah but she’s not just going to, like, drive us eighty miles with no explanation.”

Lia taps her phone on the table, sending her cookie crumbs scattering. “Do you think she would if we told her the truth? Or, well, not the truth. Part of it. Maybe not the Xavier part. But the other part.”

Ashe tries not to feel stung, and hides her hands under the table to keep Lia from seeing it. It’s practical. And it’s Lia’s secret to share, not Ashe’s. “Are you sure?”

Lia nods.

Right. Okay. “We could ask her when she picks us up, or…?”

“No. No way.” Carefully, Lia scoops the crumbs into her palm. “Do it when I’m not around. Please.” 

Oh, thank God. “Alright. I’ll find a time. And then if she says yes… are you free this weekend?”

“Depends on what grade I got on the bio test. But my parents have a thing the Saturday after next, so if they say no to this weekend we could go then. And then it’s break, right, so we could go while they’re at work.”

Two weeks like a terribly long time to wait, but the man has been dead for ten years.

Ashe looks back at the photos on the wall, to where Ororo and the other mutant are smiling. It’s odd to see evidence of her here, outside the house. That she was real and existed in the world— no, _is_ real, as far as they know. Still out there. With no idea that there are two high school students staring at her photo. “Do you think he’d be able to find Ellie? Xavier?”

“He’s a telepath, right? Point him at the right people, and he should be able to find anyone.”

The Guptas might not have an answer, but it’s good to feel like they’re doing something. Not just screaming at the void.

Ashe drinks her hot chocolate, and tries to come up with a plan.

* * *

_“Christmas_ shopping in _Connecticut?_ ”

“Well, it’s too hard to park in the city.”

Her dad makes a _point taken_ face. Her mom glares at him.

Lia pokes at her broccoli. “I’ve visited Ashe once in two weeks, I haven’t been out of Salem for like, two months. I passed my bio test—” barely— “so can I _please?_ ”

“We will discuss it after dinner.”

So, that’s probably a no, then.

After dinner, Lia plods through online Polish classes, wondering if it was stupid idea anyway. Even if the Guptas still live there, even if they’re willing to talk, who’s to say they’d know how to help? Maybe their son has already been taken away. Maybe they’ve bought into the government’s anti-mutant rhetoric. A lot can change in ten years, right?

But what else are they going to do?

Charles and Erik and Jean and Ororo aren’t her _friends,_ and Lia shouldn’t feel like she knows them, but she kind of does. Even without politics and Ellie and MRO Bill and all of that, she wants them to be around. She wants someone who can tell her how to keep living like this.

If Erik really is Jewish, like Charles had implied, then he’s a queer Jewish mutant from her grandma’s generation and that’s—

Well. If he’s over his _killing people_ thing…

Maybe talking to him wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

And _Charles_ hasn’t killed anyone, at least as far as she knows. He helps mutants. Lia is a mutant who needs help.

So if the Guptas fall through, then they’ll have to think of something else. They’ll have to keep trying.

Somewhere in that house there must be _something._

 _Knock._ “Can I come in?” her dad asks.

“Yep.”

He stands awkwardly in the doorway, looking at the school page up on her laptop with faint approval, but he doesn’t go inside. Now that she thinks about it, stealing her blanket while grounding her was the first time he’d crossed the doorway in… months? At what point did he stop going into her room? Is it because he wanted to give her her space? Or is it because he thinks that hitting puberty made her someone else?

“So,” he says. “You can go with the Grants. I’m aware that if we said no, you’d probably just go next week while we’re out.”

“Me? Never.”

He has a _masterful_ stink eye. “But we do expect your homework to be done before you go, and either your mother or I will check it over.”

“Fine.” Tomorrow night is going to suck, but at least she’ll have something to distract her.

“Are you okay?”

 _Ugh ugh ugh._ “ _Why_ do you guys keep asking if I’m okay?”

“Well, for starters,” he says, “because you keep reacting like that when we ask.”

“Are _you_ guys okay?”

“No.” She’d known that, but she wasn’t sure he’d admit it. “No, we’re not.”

Yeah.

Lia looks back at her laptop. “Mom thinks I should talk to someone.”

“I don’t think that would be the worst idea in the world.” He hesitates like he wants to say more, and Lia wishes he would. She wants him to tell her about the feelings they’ve been leaving all over the house. About their grief and the resentment that’s been left in traces. Did Mom resent Grandma? Did _he_? Lia wants them to be honest with her, and if they are, then she’s going to be honest with them—

 _I_ _’m a mutant,_ she wants to say again. _And I don_ _’t know what to do._

But maybe they’ll have a solution soon.

It’ll be easier to tell them when she has a plan, right?

“I gotta finish this,” Lia says, gesturing to the screen. “Thanks for letting me go.”

He closes the door behind him. Lia counts to ten before shutting her laptop and burying her face in her pillow.

* * *

She waits until Thursday to talk to Brook.

It’s a careful calculation. Talk to her Tuesday or Wednesday, and she’d have more time to think it over. By Friday, she might have made plans. As of now, there aren’t any Facebook events this coming weekend that Brook has RSVP’d to, which means that her weekend plans probably all involve _Red Dead Redemption._

And homework. College apps. Whatever.

Ashe takes a deep breath, and then knocks once on her sister’s door frame before going inside.

“Yeah,” Brook says, not looking up. She’s got a textbook open on her desk and a video game open on her computer. “What’s up.”

“Are you doing anything this weekend?”

“Well, ideally, I’m gonna finish this game.”

Was Ashe right, or was she right? She sits down on a pillow that looks like a Minecraft cube thingy, and tries to look worthy of a ride to Connecticut.

“Can you do me a big favor, and I will owe you for _life,_ forever’n’ever amen?”

Brook looks up from the textbook, but doesn’t pause the game. “What’s the favor?”

“You have to promise not to tell.”

“What’s the favor, Ashe? You’re being weird.”

Right. Alright. Ashe realizes that she’s hidden her hands out of habit. Which is silly. It’s not like Brook needs to look at her hands to know Ashe is nervous. “Can you drive me and Lia to Portland? This weekend?”

“Uh…. Maine? Or Connecticut? Or Oregon? I’m not driving you to Oregon. Wait— hang on— I need to watch this.”

Ashe waits patiently through a cut scene that she doesn’t think Brook actually needs to watch, and tries not to second guess herself.

“Okay. Back. What’s in Portland?”

“A thing?”

“And how long is _the thing?_ ”

“I… don’t know.”

Brook finally hits pause, turning her swivel chair around. “Then no, I’m not going to drive you there while you do something secret and you don’t know how long it’ll take. If I’m waiting around, I should at least know why. This isn’t a drugs thing, right?”

“Brooklyn!”

They frown at each other.

“If I tell you why, then will you be okay not knowing how long it’ll take? It won’t be overnight.” If Brook freaks, then… Ashe doesn’t want to think about _then._ At best, they’ll have to find another way to find answers. At worst, Charles Xavier will be trapped forever, and more importantly, so will Lia, and Ashe will never see her again and she’ll be locked up somewhere miserable with Shawn and Ellie and the Sidners will lose their daughter right after Hanna and Ashe won’t have her best friend and, and, and.

“Tell me why and I’ll think about it.”

“You _can_ _’t_ tell anyone.” Ashe pulls her knees up to her chest, trying not to feel like a child. “You have to swear on… on the graves of everyone you know, and the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and know that I know about that time you got drunk at a party and made out with Steve Forester and—”

“I get it,” Brook snaps. “I won’t tell. But you’re freaking me out.”

Three, two, one, talk— Ashe opens and closes her mouth for a moment, and then tries again. “Lia’s a mutant.”

“Oh thank _God._ ”

What. “What?”

“I thought one of you needed an abortion.”

“Gross, Brook!”

Brook raises her hands. “No judgment. I mean, I’d probably take you to get an abortion if you needed one. Not that you would! Considering.” 

Ashe tries not to panic. “Considering _what?_ ”

“What can Lia do and why does it mean you need to go to Connecticut? Is this why you’ve been so weird lately? And why you freaked out about Ellie so much? I _knew_ there was something going on!” Her voice is getting steadily louder.

“Sssh!” Ashe’s parents were downstairs last time she’d seen them, but it’s not as though they aren’t capable of moving. “I’d have been upset about Ellie anyway!” Probably. “Lia can see emotions. It’s kind of weird, but it’s not _dangerous._ ”

“I didn’t say she was dangerous.”

She hadn’t, had she? “And there’s someone in Portland who can help with something, but her parents don’t know and her parents _can_ _’t_ know and neither can Mom and Dad, and especially no one at school can find out.”

“I know.” Right. Right. Brook knows. “Who are these people?”

“It’s like… a support group. For teenage mutants. To help.” Well. It could lead them _to_ someone to help, at any rate. “Found them online.”

“And you know that sounds like a sting or a trafficking scheme, right?”

“Well that’s why I’m also going, and why you’ll be out front with the car. We’re just going to check it out, Brook.”

Brook rubs her hands over her face. “At least you’re not having an abortion,” she mutters. “You’re paying for gas, for lunch, for dinner if it gets late, and if Aunt Mary and Uncle Ben send us Amazon gift cards for Christmas again, I get yours.”

“Thank you.” Ashe flints herself at her sister, nearly knocking the chair into the computer. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. God, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that _Lia_ _’s a mutant.”_

“Thank you thank you thank you—”

“Oookay.” Brook gives Ashe a shove. “I’ve been thanked. Get out of my room.” 

* * *

Lia expected the next morning’s drive to be awkward, considering that Brook now knows she’s been lying for months. Instead, Brook seems to have adopted the strategy of pretending that everything is normal: she and Ashe bicker over the radio station, over whether Billie Eilish is good or not, and whether or not Ashe should roll her seat forwards. Lia barely has time to get a word in before they’re in the school parking lot.

“Is she okay?” Lia asks, once they’re out of the car.

“I think so. She was surprised, but not like, angry. I think she just doesn’t want to make it weird. And I didn’t think you’d want her to ask too many questions. So.”

Lia isn’t sure she’d have minded being asked questions, but the car ride to school wouldn’t have been a good time for them. Maybe tomorrow. Because they’re going to Connecticut. “Thanks.”

“Of course. See you in gym.”

Lia trudges off to first period, and proceeds to retain none of it. She doesn't process second, third, or fourth, either.

“Miss Sidner, a word,” Crown says when the bell rings, and Lia tries to think of what she’s done wrong. Not paid attention, clearly. Scraped by with Cs, obviously. Maybe her extra credit essay was bad. Maybe Crown heard Lia and Ashe whispering about mutants and she’s going to report her to MRO Bill. Maybe she knows about Lia and Ashe sneaking around the Graymalkin House, but even if she did, that wouldn’t be her business, would it?

She tries not to look like she’s bracing herself. “Yes?”

The room empties, and maybe this is it— maybe MRO Bill is about to come in and take her away— but Crown isn’t scared or tense or determined. There’s just calm worry where her hands move on her desk.

“Are you,” Crown says, and then takes a deep breath as though the words actually pain her, “alright?”

Lia pretends to be very interested in the American flag that’s hanging above the blackboard. She’s sure she hasn’t heard the words correctly. “Huh?”

“You’re distracted, and you’re turning in your essays, but your classwork is going downhill, and you’ve taken to whispering in here during your lunch period.” There’s something about Mrs. Crown’s eyes that make her glare extra effective. “I’d rather not have to go to your guidance counselor with my concerns, because that would require my doing paperwork. Or, God forbid, sitting in meetings.”

“Good, then?”

“I know it’s been a time of… a lot of stress for you.”

“Well, my grandma died a few weeks ago, and then this whole thing—”

“And also for your peers,” Mrs. Crown continues, not deflected. “And you might feel like you’re being watched all the time.”

Lia waits, but there is no follow-through. _You might feel like you_ _’re being watched, but you’re not,_ that’s what she’s supposed to say, right? “Well, it’s high school.”

“I didn’t say you were wrong to think it.” Pause. “You can come to me if you ever need help.”

Is that menacing? What the fuck is going on here?

“Alright?”

Crown sits back down at her computer, and Lia assumes the conversation is over. What the fuck. Does Mrs. Crown know? Does she know and she’s trying to warn her? Does she know and she’s trying to help her? Or, more likely, did Lia’s dad email her about her grades and Mrs. Crown just wants him to stop, but is really bad at dealing with students with emotional issues?

Probably the last one.

Gotta be the last one.

Lia proceeds to get anxiety all over her algebra notes.


	11. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Then let’s knock.” Ashe does not make any move to do so either.
> 
> They’ve come this far. They’ve come this far, and they just have to—
> 
> “Do you want me to do it?” Brook asks. “Or can we leave, and you two can start behaving like rational people?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double chapter week \o/

At eight o’clock the next morning, Brook pulls up in her Pontiac as if it were a school day. Lia feels like she should be wearing her backpack, but instead all she has is a bag of snacks and her hoodie, with what she _thinks_ is Nathan’s letter in the pouch. She's paranoid that it's a different envelope that she picked up by mistake.

Ashe meets her on the driveway, almost a smudge of nervous energy, and Lia pulls her into a hug.

“Alright,” Ashe is muttering. “Alright, okay. We’re good. We can do this.”

“They might not even be there.” They have to be. They’ll have no leads otherwise, but there are so many ways this could go wrong. “This is the letter, right?” she holds it out, and Ashe nods.

She tries not to feel the weight of what they’re doing as she opens the back door to the car. This could change everything. But it could also change nothing, and she has to remember that. Ashe climbs in next to her, displacing a small heap of empty pringles cans and band sweatshirts.

Brook huffs. “Don’t _both_ sit in the back. I’m not a goddamn chauffeur.”

“You can take the front,” Ashe says. “Since I always sit there when we’re going to school.”

“It’s your sister’s car,” Lia counters, not to be outdone. “You can go.”

“No, it’s—”

“For fuck’s sake.” Brook flings up her hands, trying just a little too hard to act normal. “Fine. I’m just going to drive. Don’t canoodle back there.”

Ashe smears anger/embarrassment across the back of Brook’s seat. “Fuck off.”

“Can someone Google Map us?”

“Nope,” Lia says. It’s not like their phones don’t know where they are, but they’re trying not to be _entirely_ stupid. Just like, normal stupid. “I printed out the instructions. Just get on 84.”

Brook backs out of the driveway, and they sit in silence for a while. Occasionally, Lia and Ashe will look at each other, and Ashe will give what she probably thinks is a reassuring smile, but it looks more like she’s had her lips glued to her teeth. So instead Lia tries to watch the road, twisting her locket chain around her finger. There’s a faint trail of panic ahead of them. Or maybe it’s excitement? It was strong, whatever it was, to go through the car and onto the road. Perhaps someone was running late for something good? Maybe Lia can learn to find more details. To see more when she’s looking for it, less when she’s not. Even then she’ll only ever see the world other people see in photographs, and it’s not that she’s not okay with it, but—

“So, Lia. Ashe says you can see what people are feeling.”

“Yeah.”

“So like… can you see when they’re horny?”

“Brook!” Ashe wails.

It’s a little refreshing, to have someone ask. “Not usually, unless they’re really _really_ turned on? I’d have to like, stare at their crotch to tell, and I don’t… stare at crotches. Although Lewis was basically grinding on his desk chair in math a couple weeks back. So he left a trail.”

“You told me about that!” Ashe hides her face in her hands. _“Gross.”_

“What am I feeling right now?”

Lia leans between the seats to stare, squinting at where Brook’s shoulders bump against the back of her seat. Now that she’s looking closely, she can almost see that aura that she did with Ashe’s water bottle, and then it’s gone—

There when they stopped at a light, gone when they moved.

Brook’s marks on the seat stay on the seat.

“Curious,” Lia says, pulling back. “And either nervous or… just general anxiety.” They don’t look exactly the same, but it can be hard to put her finger on the difference. _Nervous_ comes before a big test, _anxiety_ comes after it. It’s a bit of a texture thing.

“Huh.”

They make strained chit-chat for the rest of the drive, but Lia tries to focus instead on where they’re going. What she’s going to say. She tries to mentally run through scenarios for the next hour, until they pull off I-84.

It’s a lot less convenient to navigate from paper directions. She should probably get better at this, because she does not have a good sense of how long it takes to drive a mile on an arterial road. They have to backtrack a couple times to get back on the route, and at one point, Ashe has to open her phone’s compass app to determine whether they’re actually driving west. But finally, they stop in front of the house that matches the picture she’d stalked on Google Street view.

It’s not remarkable.

It’s white, like the houses on either side of it. There’s a thin layer of snow on the lawn, surrounded by patches of dead grass. The driveway is salted. A string of lights has been tossed over a thin bush.

“This is a house,” Brook says. “They’re having this meeting in a house? I thought it’d be like… a library or something.”

“Hang on a sec.” There are trails all over the walk and the front yard— something like fear but not quite fear, and some other things far less distinct. The most recent path goes between the front door and a car, so that means they were going inside— “Someone’s home.”

“Wasn’t your meeting at nine-thirty?” Brook asks, suspicious. “That was five minutes ago. Surely you were expecting people to be there?”

“Right. Of course.” Lia tries to smile. “If you just want to wait here…”

“Uh, I’m not sure I should let you walk into a room full of strangers all by yourself when they might be undercover Sentinels.”

“I _really_ don’t think they will be,” Ashe says.

Brook looks from one guilty face to another. “Do they even know you’re coming?”

“Well—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Ashe turns to Lia, eyebrows raised.

“Well,” Lia says. How to… “There’s a chance it’s not… actually a support group.”

“Jesus _Christ._ ”

“But we do really need to talk to them.”

Brook puts the key back in the ignition. “We’re going home.”

“Don’t—” Lia starts, but Ashe is already out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She waits on the parking strip, arms crossed, and Lia gives Brook an apologetic shrug before following.

Brook hits the steering wheel once before she gets out as well. “I drove you guys an hour and a half, and you were _lying_? _”_

“Well—”

“You have _five seconds_ to explain before I call mom.”

“We can’t explain in five seconds,” Ashe says. “You can come in with us, just… don’t be mad, and don’t react to anything, okay?”

“Don’t _react?_ ”

“Come on.” Ashe grabs Brook’s arm, and they march up the driveway. Lia trails behind them, salt crunching under her feet, trying not to feel sick. It’s fine. She’s got Ashe and Brook here, Brook is more likely to blackmail Ashe forever than call their mom, and that fear-like emotion on the ground could be anything—

And if they can convince the Guptas that they can be trusted, they might be minutes away from answers.

She nearly bumps into Ashe on the patio. They’ve stopped walking, but they haven’t quite made it the last couple steps.

“We just gotta knock,” Lia says. She tries to focus on the door, and not whatever is on the lawn and doorknob. It’s the holidays, and there are always reasons to feel off around the holidays. Family, bad weather, maybe someone here works as an Amazon delivery driver…

“Then let’s knock.” Ashe does not make any move to do so either.

They’ve come this far. They’ve come this far, and they just have to—

“Do you want me to do it?” Brook asks. “Or can we leave, and you two can start behaving like rational people?”

Lia raps three times on the door. She thinks she can hear creaking inside, as if someone is walking around, but maybe that’s just the house settling. Or dogs. Maybe this is relief, that she’s feeling; maybe she was wrong about the trail from the car, and they can go get lunch and try again in a couple hours. Or maybe the Guptas are out of town.

“Oh, God,” Ashe says. “What if they were _renting?_ And moved out years ago? We should have checked their mail, seen what name was on it.” 

Maybe the search ends here.

“Okay, so like, that’s a _crime_. I cannot believe you two.”

It can’t end here.

Lia rings the bell. Another handful of long seconds pass, and then, yes, those are footsteps. A harried-looking woman opens the door— her dark hair is frizzing, and she’s got bags under her eyes.

“I already donated to Greenpeace.”

“We’re not from Greenpeace,” Lia says, and forgets what she was going to say next.

Ashe clears her throat, putting on her best Talking to Grown-Ups voice. “Are you Denise Gupta?”

The woman pulls back a little. “Can I help you with something?”

Shit. Shit, Lia had been practicing, and now it’s gone. “Are you Nathan’s mom?” It’s the wrong thing to say. A spike of fear leaks out around the fingers on the doorknob, and Lia is finally able to recognize what was on the path. _Suspicion._ All at once she realizes there could be a weapon behind that door, and she holds up her hands. “We just— we aren’t with any groups, we were just wondering if you could help us— did he go to a school called Xavier’s, about ten years ago?”

A hand lands on her shoulder, and Lia is mid-flinch when she realizes it’s Brook. “I’m sorry. This is my little sister and her friend. They’re socially awkward. We’re just leaving.”

“Lia, show her—”

Right. Right. Lia pulls the letter from her hoodie pouch. “You were the only parent we could find,” she says.

“Hari!” Denise hollers over her shoulder. “Some friends of Charles!”

Lia looks back at the other two, and they both shrug. There’s the nearby sound of a chair being pushed back, and a few moments later a man sticks his head around the door. He assesses them for a moment, and then withdraws.

“One minute.” Denise closes the door.

“Maybe we could have lied our way in,” Ashe says. “Like they do on TV. Say we’re here about, I don’t know. Anything else. How are they feeling?”

“Suspicious. Afraid. Probably about three strangers coming and asking about their mutant child.”

“Their _what_ ,” Brook says.

“We found an abandoned mutant school on Graymalkin Lane, that their son used to go to. We found a letter from them in his room.” Lia hands it over, but Brook doesn’t have time to read it before the door opens again.

“Come in.” Denise sounds a little less frosty now, and they shuffle inside cautiously.

The house is older than it looked from the outside, built when the style was to shove a bunch of small rooms together. The living room is immediately to the right, its walls covered in framed photos: some look like antiques, with stern faced relatives in oval frames, but most feature two children at various stages of growth. The large one at the center must be Denise and Hari’s wedding photo: they’re both wearing brightly colored clothes, beaming at the camera.

“Why do you want to know about Xavier’s?” Denise asks. She waves them over to the couch, sitting herself in one of the armchairs. Hari follows, standing just behind it— careful, determined, and Lia realizes that _friend of Charles_ was a code. They’re ready for something.

Lia was an idiot for not being more ready herself. At least Brook is here. And though none of them would be any good in a fight, Lia is pretty sure her parents would bail her out of jail. Even if they ground her for life afterward.

She wants to hold Ashe’s hand, just for reassurance, but she’s trying to look like she knows what she’s doing. And since nobody else is talking, and she’s the mutant here: “We’re Lia, Ashe and Brook. We found an abandoned building, which turned out to be Xavier’s school. We went exploring it just… because.” What was she going to say after that? “We thought it’d be fun?”

Denise and Hari aren’t relaxing, but they aren’t ready to fight, either.

“Some mutants were taken away in our town. We were hoping to find Xavier’s old teachers, or someone who might be able to help. None of the numbers in his phone book work. We found your letters to Nathan in his room, and we thought you might know what happened.”

Maybe Nathan disappeared with the rest of them. Maybe they’ve been in mourning for years, maybe—

“Is he okay?” Ashe asks quietly. “Did he… make it out?”

The Guptas are silent for long enough that Lia is worried they’ve gotten this entirely wrong, that the lack of bodies in the house just means the fleeing students were rounded up, taken away—

“He’s fine,” Hari says, stiff. “When the school was evacuated, he came home. No trouble since.”

There’s something around him, some feeling Lia can see it if she squints. “That’s not true.” They both look at her in alarm, and she tries not to feel the thrill of catching someone in a lie.

“He went to Xavier’s, got his abilities under control. We have had no trouble,” he repeats.

Behind Lia, a door creaks.

The boy who opened it is probably around Brook’s age, but there are still traces of little Nathan Gupta around his eyes.

“You found Xavier’s?” he asks, and he’s not nervous like his parents: he’s excited, even as they tense.

 _“Nate,_ ” Hari says.

It takes Lia a moment to notice the girl standing just behind Nathan. She’s maybe eleven or twelve, and her jaw is set like she’s prepared to fight.

“What do you mean, _found?_ ” Brook asks, looking at Ashe and Lia. “It’s just… been there.”

The Guptas look at each other. It’s almost comical— Hari turns to Denise, who’s trying to communicate something to Nate, who’s looking at Hari, who then turns and looks at Nate who has already nudged the girl who must be his sister.

“If they already know it doesn’t matter what we tell them, right?” Nate asks. Then, “are you guys mutants?”

For months, Lia has feared and hoped for this question. She isn’t sure which reaction she’s supposed to have now— she’s forgotten how to answer it, maybe how to speak, but Ashe and Brook are waiting for her, so she makes herself nod.

“My sister and I aren’t,” Ashe clarifies. “Lia is.”

Ashe is the only person she’s ever told, and now there’s this room full of strangers. But it’s not like she hadn’t expected them to ask. 

Paranoia and suspicion have completely covered the pattern on Denise’s chair. “What’s your power?”

“Um….” Is there even a word for it? If she says too much, will they stab her in the back? If she says too little, will they trust her? “I can see your emotions on things you’ve touched.”

“What?”

Maybe when they find Charles Xavier, he’ll tell her there’s a special word for this. “I can show you? I’ll go into another room. You trace some words or shapes on a few of the photos on the wall with your finger.”

They don’t even have Lia, Brook and Ashe’s full first names. Surely they could still disappear, if they had to.

Denise nods once. “Hari?”

Hari leaves his position by the armchair and gestures for Lia to follow him into the kitchen. It’s about six steps— not too far from Ashe and Brook, if something should happen, but still farther than she’s comfortable with.

The kitchen is small, and Lia tries not to look around, lest they get even more suspicious. Instead she stares at Hari’s elbow, while he looks somewhere over her forehead.

 _Get many visitors, then?_ she wants to say. 

“Alright,” Nate calls, and Lia returns to her spot on the couch.

The marks on the walls are brighter with intent, and Lia is reminded of Ashe’s support on her arm when she went to talk to MRO Bill. Does knowing what they’re doing make it stronger?

“There’s a circle on the baby photo, a smiley face on the wedding photo, and someone else drew an anarchy logo on the window.” Someone a lot less alarmed by the whole situation than Denise— either Nathan or his sister. Lia’s pretty sure it’s the sister, and she’s torn between the competing desires to show off and give away as little as she can. She opts for the second one.

“Huh,” Nate says. “So where is it? Xavier’s.”

Lia opens her mouth to answer, but Ashe grabs her arm. “Why don’t you know? You were there. Why hasn’t anyone come back?”

“When we left—” he looks at his sister, not his parents, before continuing. “What do you know about Charles Xavier?”

If this is a trap, it’s a very elaborate one. “Mutant rights leader,” Lia says. “Ran a school.”

Brook pokes her in the side. Lia ignores her.

“His mutation?”

“Telepath?”

“So you know. Right. Okay.” Nathan sits down on the arm of his mom’s chair, pulling his feet up and crouching like a gargoyle. “I was only there a few months. But one night, he woke us all up, like, in our heads— he couldn’t just read thoughts, he could also project his own. Make you see things, make you do things, if he wanted to. But he was big not using your powers on other people. His powers made him a good teacher, though— he could always see how to help us, could always figure out what the problem was.” 

There’s something odd about his mouth, and it’s taken until now for Lia to figure it out: his gums and tongue aren’t in shadow like she’d thought. They’re matte black, leaving only his teeth to stand out.

“Anyway, so that night, they said people had come looking for us. I assumed it was a drill, because we’d done those before. But then K— um, an older kid, I think she must have been the one that told me it was real. We went out through the tunnels—”

“Tunnels?” Lia asks.

“Yeah, there are tunnels. Behind a couple walls.” He carries on like this is a normal thing to be in a school. “We all went out and split up into groups, to get driven to a meet-up point.”

Ashe is rubbing her forehead. “Everyone left?”

“Yeah, except Professor Xavier. One of my teachers said he’d stayed behind to get everyone else out safely, but then he never found us again. I remember that, I remember a lot of people were really worried, the teachers and older kids especially. Someone was supposed to go back for him, but they couldn’t. I didn’t understand why at the time.”

He goes silent.

“So are _you_ going to tell us why, or—” Brook starts.

“He made us forget,” Denise says. “Where the school was. We knew it must have been in the country, because Nathan didn’t have a passport when he was that age, and we think it was somewhere within driving distance because there weren’t any plane tickets on our credit card bills, but other than that…” she flips her hands over so her palms are facing the ceiling. “We didn’t even realize we didn’t know until they brought him home.”

“When was that?” Lia asks.

Hari clears his throat, checking the windows. “A few weeks later. We got a message, a couple days after they fled, telling us that they were all at a safe location. And then… around January, maybe? Once they were sure the house wasn’t being watched, they brought him back. Said they’d let us know when they were able to reopen the school somewhere else.”

Of course. They were foolish to think Xavier’s was the only option. There are more schools out there, the teachers survived, even if Xavier really is dead. Maybe that’s where Ellie is now, and Lia was worried for nothing. Maybe Lia can go to one of those— “So did they?”

“We never heard.”

She hadn’t realized how high her hopes had risen until they’re dashed.

“When we asked, they said they were having issues with funding, or location— and for a while, things were getting better in our school district—”

“—And I wasn’t melting my pillows anymore—” Nathan mutters.

“—So we figured it was fine.” Hari looks at their daughter as he says this. “Then after some incidents, and the election, we decided that many mutants in one place might not be the safest thing anyway. Considering.”

And they all keep looking at the sister. She’s hanging back by the doorway, almost quiet, almost still, but restless.

“Are you a mutant as well?” Lia asks. Fair’s fair.

She grins, wiggling her fingers as though she’s waving goodbye. Lights dance between them, and a lightbulb breaks.

Denise groans.

“Maybe they’ll reopen, if we can find them,” Ashe says. “If you tell them where the house is, and they can… get back into the bank accounts.”

“Yeah, I’m still confused on that point.” Brook raises a hand as though she’s in class. “Even if you forgot where it was, you sent letters.” She’s still holding the one they’d brought with them, and she brandishes it at Hari and Denise. “You must have written it down.”

“Yeah, I had the address,” Denise says. “It was written on a notecard on the bulletin board, and in a file on my computer. When I learned that the school had evacuated, I went to shred the notecard, but it was already gone. The computer file was there, but it was blank and saved over. I assume Xavier… somehow compelled me to do it, and I forgot.”

“Huh,” Ashe says.

“Good thing he never used his powers for evil, right?” Hari’s laugh is uncomfortable. “If he’d been one of the Brotherhood—”

He abruptly stops talking.

“There were a couple other telepaths at that school. You couldn’t mess people around _that_ much without someone noticing— and Professor Xavier would never have done that, anyway. He’d never even like, solve any drama. These two upperclassmen who lived next to me kept breaking up and getting back together and he just like, let them.”

Brook snorts.

“Oh, the room with the girl’s clothes?” Ashe grins. “We found that.”

“The rooms are still there? Untouched?” Nathan is smiling too. “Can I come back with you and see it?”

There hasn’t been anyone but Lia and Ashe in that house, and it still feels like _their_ thing, even though it’s so clearly beyond that. It was Nate’s thing first, right?

“Sure,” Ashe says.

“Mom, can I—”

“Not right now.” Denise smiles an _I don_ _’t trust strangers_ smile. “Maybe later.”

Right. Yeah. “The teachers that dropped you off.” Is there a way to ask this without sounding sketchy as fuck? “Didn’t they leave you a way to contact them, in case you got in trouble?”

Denise shrugs.

“They did,” Lia guesses. There had been a lot of scary things in that house, but there was a lot of love, as well. In the way Charles remembered the hallway full of kids, the fact that Ororo, Scott and Jean had stayed so long— they wouldn’t have just left their students with nothing.

“We know they weren’t just teachers.” Ashe keeps talking even after Lia elbows her. “Can you contact them and see if they’d talk to us, or see if they’ll send someone to Salem Center?”

Welp, now the Guptas know where they’re from.

“Yes, mutants roaming the streets looking at all the houses is going to go great,” Brook mutters. She’s holding it together pretty well, considering the anxiety all over her. “Not _just_ teachers?”

“Give me your phone number,” Denise says. “Maybe someone will call you.”

Ashe opens her mouth to speak, but Brook whacks her in the side. “Um, no. How about I give you an email address?”

“How is that better than a phone number?” Ashe asks. “They could trap you with an email address.”

“No one is going to trap you,” Nathan says. “The X-Men are—”

His parents turn to glare at him, and he stops talking, eyes dropping to the floor.

“The _X-Men?_ ” Brook repeats, turning to glare at Ashe. Who looks at Lia. Traitor.

“There might have been some X logos on some of the things,” Lia says, trying to sound like she has never heard of the X-Men in her life. “But, you know, X gene, X-avier, lots of _Xs_ around, could be anyone, really. Nathan could be confused.” 

“ _Right._ Anything else I should know?”

“Nope.” Ashe turns back to the Guptas. “Can you get in touch with them or not?”

If Lia had a nickel for every knowing glance tossed around this room, she’d be able to buy at least one donut. Perhaps two.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Hari says carefully. “It might take a little bit of time.”

“A bit like a couple hours or a bit like a few weeks?” Brook looks at the clock, and Lia follows her gaze. They’ve already been here for over an hour.

“I’ll let you know. Nate, can you offer them some food?”

“Oh, we don’t want to put you out,” Lia says, part out of politeness, part out of the need to fully dissect everything that’s been said. “We can just go get something if we get hungry.” Maybe donuts. They’re in Connecticut, there’s got to be a Dunkin nearby. It’s probably the law in New England that there has to be a Dunkin Donuts at least every five miles.

Denise smiles again, and Lia realizes what she meant was _stay where I can see you._ Once again, she’s ushered into the kitchen, but this time Ashe and Brook are with her.

“Sorry about her.” Nathan looks a little sheepish. “She’s been paranoid ever since Anaaya manifested. Especially after the Supreme Court upheld that bill in Georgia.”

“Which bill in Georgia?” Lia asks.

“Makes use of mutant powers in public a crime. You didn’t see that?”

She’s been afraid of looking interested in any mutant news whatsoever. “That’s not fair. I’m always using my powers. If I could _not_ use my powers sometimes, I would.”

Nathan opens one of the cabinets. “Yeah, tell that to the legislature. They don’t know shit; they just want to look good. Want that crunchy crunchy Stryker PAC money, probably. Uh… do you want some crackers? We probably have something better than crackers.”

“It’ll just give them an excuse to take mutants away,” Ashe agrees. “Especially ones with visible…” she trails off, looking at Nathan’s mouth.

“Yeah, I know. Not gonna go smiling around Georgia, that’s for sure.” He spits into the garbage can, and it sizzles.

Ashe grins. “Cool.”

“Useful,” Lia notes, and Nathan shrugs, abandoning the cabinets and rummaging through the freezer instead.

“It’s useful to get fires started when camping, but not much else. Can’t even set things on fire, but it burns a hole in the wood. Also, I can’t throw up indoors. Melted a toilet doing that when I was a kid.”

Gross.

But Ashe is still smiling. Her footsteps say something is really bothering her, but it must not be relevant, if she hasn’t tried to communicate it to Lia. “So, what, you just run outside and melt a hole in the grass?”

“Pretty much. I mostly just avoid throwing up. Do you guys want pizza rolls? Is it too early in the day for pizza rolls?”

Nothing like a nice discussion of vomit to work up an appetite. “Sure.”

Brook is staring real hard at some family photos on the wall, distress visible even as she stands still. “Are you okay?” Lia asks, because she doesn’t really want to watch Ashe and Nathan… talk. They’re probably not flirting, because Lia has never seen Ashe flirt with a guy ever, and Nate is almost, like, Brook’s age, but it’s weird how interested Ashe is in what he can do. Or maybe it’s not weird. For the first time, Lia wishes she could do something showier. Something to make it obvious she’s a mutant if she wants it to be, without being identifiable at a distance. More impressive than standing in the hallway playing guessing games.

That probably makes her an asshole.

“We’re in so over our heads,” Brook says. “You went from _mutant support group_ to _mutant school_ and now the X-Men are involved?! And you haven’t said a word of this to any adult before these ones?”

It’s a good thing they hadn’t told her about the ghosts. “What were we supposed to do? We’ve got an MRO looking for any signs of mutant activity, my parents would _completely_ freak out and they’re already freaking out about Grandma, and _your_ parents aren’t even involved!”

“They’re involved when my little sister is trying to get in touch with militant mutant groups!” she hisses.

“The X-Men aren’t a militant mutant group!”

“The United States Government would say differently! I’m not making a moral value here, just a practical one. Jesus Christ.” She presses her hands to her face in a gesture so reminiscent of Ashe it makes Lia blink.

“The X-Men were good,” Nathan says. “They helped mutants, and they saved people. They saved a lot of people, times that you never even heard about.”

Lia thinks of Magneto by the window, apologizing for attempted murder. “I know.”

“Right.” He pulls a plate out of the microwave, looking a bit sheepish. “Food?”

* * *

In early November, 2008, Charles Xavier yoinked the location of his school out of the memories of everyone who’d ever heard of it.

The same week Ashe’s family went to see _Swan Lake and_ got home late at night because of the traffic jam. Maybe it was even the same night. The Grants could have been driving past Graymalkin Lane when it happened.

Did Ashe forget the ballet all on her own, or did Charles take it away from her?

That’d be ridiculous, right? She’s probably just trying to find a way to force herself into the story somehow.

But that gate. That gate, that driveway, they’ve bothered her from the moment she saw it. And that song—

Maybe she heard it somewhere else.

Maybe it’s a coincidence.

But it doesn’t feel like one.

She chats with Nate, trying to see if he’ll tell her any more about powers, about Charles’s powers, without making it seem like that’s what she’s doing. It doesn’t work, but the pizza rolls aren’t half bad.

“If your mom called the X-Men, how long do you think it’ll take them to get here?” Lia asks. She says it casually, but it’s clearly anything but. “Do you think they’ll even show?”

Nate shrugs. “I don’t know where they are,” he says. Might be true. Might not be true. “Some of them can travel fast. But it’s not like this is an emergency, right?”

Lia and Ashe look at each other.

“What if it is?” Ashe says.

“Explain.”

“There’s something that might be.” Though if he’s been there for ten years, a few more days won’t kill him, right? “And… a girl we know, she was caught being a mutant. Her family hasn’t seen her since. We were hoping they’d be able to help us. If that’s the kind of thing they help with.” She realizes she’s probably giving Nate enough information to figure out where they went to high school, since Ellie had made the news, but they’d already spilled the beans on Salem Center.

Nate makes a sympathetic face. “I don’t know about your friend. I mean. I’m not in touch with them, but I’m sure they’re doing all they can to help. In a general sense. You know.”

Right. Nothing to see here. Message received.

Maybe Lia and Ashe should tell them the full story. Light a fire under the X-Men’s butts. They’d return for Charles, wouldn’t they?

But if the Guptas aren’t being entirely honest with them, then Ashe sees no reason to do the same. If something went wrong, if the information got into the wrong hands, then Charles might be worse off than he is now. And they could get dragged into all kinds of trouble.

An hour passes, and then two.

At what point are they going to be expected back home?

At what point will they be allowed to leave?

Nathan doesn’t offer any more information, and Anaaya watches silently from a distance, her hands curled into fists the whole time. Is she ready to fight them, or is she trying to control her powers?

Or both?

Every twenty minutes or so, Denise or Hari will walk past the kitchen. They’re both keeping an eye on the front windows, which Ashe guesses means that they’re either afraid of the cops or Sentinel Services. Or they’re expecting someone.

Hopefully one of the X-Men.

Possibly the police.

Maybe they’re turning in Lia, in exchange for immunity, or something. Maybe Ashe will get locked up as well for aiding and abetting. But all she’s done is break and enter an abandoned building. It’s not _that_ big a crime. She’s a minor.

But if Guptas were selling them out, they’d feel guilty, right? Or something? Lia hasn’t given any sign that anything’s amiss, but Ashe wishes they could talk in private.

Then, just as the clock is inching towards one pm, a car pulls up on the street. Ashe checks the hallway to see Denise leaning against the front door— no— looking through the peephole.

Lia gets up and rushes towards the kitchen window, peeking out through the closed blinds. “Ashe.”

Oh god it’s the cops it’s the cops—

It isn’t the cops.

It’s one man.

An old one. Older than he’d looked in the memories, though that’s to be expected. He doesn’t walk how Lia’s grandma did at the end— he’s still got a confident stride, and Ashe can almost see that weird cape he wears in all the news pictures, even though he just has a puffy zip-up jacket on instead.

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

“Ssh!”

They don’t have time to say anything more, because they can hear the door opening, and he and Denise are exchanging greetings.

“You’re earlier than I expected,” she’s saying.

“I’m a fast driver.”

They come into the kitchen, and Denise smiles. Sort of smiles. “Everyone, this is Max. Max, these girls say they’ve found the school.”

_Max?_

Ashe looks at Lia, hoping her face is readable as _I_ _’m not hallucinating, right?_ And Lia looks back, making a face that probably means _no that is definitely Magneto._

“Max,” Lia repeats, sounding a little faint. “Uh… nice to meet you?”

It turns out there’s a really big difference between seeing the ghost of a terrorist who can’t hurt you, and being faced with a really old man who absolutely could. He doesn’t like humans. Ashe is humans. Lia shifts so that she’s standing just in front of her, and Ashe appreciates that, and then feels terrible about appreciating it. Because _holy fucking shit_ he is _right in front of them._

When she’d said _teachers,_ she’d expected someone like Hank or Ororo.

Denise and Hari don’t seem frightened, though only Lia would know for sure. Maybe Magneto has stopped killing humans. Or maybe they really believe his name is Max. He doesn’t _look_ like a terrorist, and that somehow makes it worse.

“The school,” Magneto says.

Lia bites her lip. “We were… hoping to talk to one of the teachers.”

“I was a teacher.”

Was he? Lia doesn’t turn to see Ashe’s Significant Look, so Ashe looks at Denise instead. Because somewhere to the left of the fear, she’s also a little insulted. Do they think she and Lia are utter morons?

“Sure,” Lia says. She’s squinting in that way she does when she’s really _looking_ for someone’s emotions. “Alright. _Max._ Sure. Um…”

He raises his eyebrows.

Ashe wonders how many murderers she’s passed on the street in her life without knowing it.

But he never murdered Charles. He cared for Charles. Decades on different sides of a fight, but he was still right there when Charles came back, despite the misgivings of everyone else. The rest of the X-Men probably wouldn’t want him to hear this first, but—

But Denise had called the X-Men, and he came. Or at least, the X-Men left Denise his contact information. That means he must be on their side, at least a little, right?

Right?

“We’ll tell you the address,” Ashe says. “But—”

“No.”

“What?”

He gives her a look as though she’s an idiot. “You’re going to take me there.”

Right. Fine. Okay.

The only thing more dangerous than driving somewhere with Magneto would be _not_ driving somewhere with Magneto after he’d specifically asked them to.

“Um?” Brook asks.

Ashe wants to elbow her, but she’s standing too far away.

“Fine,” Lia says, before anyone can say anything else. “Let’s go.” She walks stiffly out of the kitchen, even though Magneto is standing between them and the door. Ashe nods Brook forward, because Brook doesn’t know who is in the room with them, so it wouldn’t be fair to leave her without Ashe watching her back.

 _Whatthefuckwhatthefuck_ what the _fuck_ have they gotten into?

Ashe is really tempted to glare at the Guptas, but she’s too afraid to look at them in case she gives something away. Instead she walks forward, closer to Magneto, closer, then past him, past him, and he doesn’t kill her, and he doesn’t kill her, and then she’s in the living room and then out the front door, jogging to catch up with Lia. She can hear him following, and tries to keep her voice down.

“What do we do?”

“We take him to the house.”

“But he—”

“I _know._ But I don’t think he’s going to hurt us. We have to tell him—”

“Are you sure—” 

“Tell me what?” Magneto asks, as they come to a stop in front of the car. “I can still hear you. In case you were wondering.”

Right. They’re only surrounded by lots of metal cars. Light posts. So many ways to kill them. But also, witnesses. One doesn’t murder three teenagers in Portland, Connecticut, especially if one wants a ride. Maybe they should keep the address a secret, just for insurance purposes.

Ashe squeezes Lia’s hand, not sure when she started holding it. She’s probably getting fear all over Lia’s mittens.

Brook leans against the car door, still scowling. 

“Tell me what?” Magneto repeats, and this time Ashe feels her necklace tighten. She reaches for it, trying not to panic.

“We think Charles Xavier is alive,” Lia says.

The necklace loosens. The car suspension creaks. Brook jumps away from it.

“Charles Xavier is dead.”

“He’s been dead before, though,” Ashe points out, her terror countered by how goddamn tired she is of adults thinking she doesn’t know anything.

“We think his… consciousness, or unconsciousness, is there, somehow,” Lia says. “Maybe. We saw things. Memories from his point of view. Including one where he told _you_ about how he could exist without a body. _Max._ ”

Lia looks fearless, and Ashe loves her, and also wants to hide under a car and cry like a baby. But if she thinks about crying, she’ll _start_ crying, so she can’t, she can’t.

If Magneto feels any kind of way about this, he isn’t showing it. “Take me there,” he repeats, getting into the back seat of Brook’s car, even though Ashe is sure it was locked.

“He’s not just going to take his own car?” Brook mutters. “Who the hell _is_ this? And who is Charles?”

The more important question is, which one of them is going to sit next to him? Ashe doesn’t want to, but she doesn’t want Lia to have to either— aaand Lia has already climbed in the back. Ashe hopes it’s Lia protecting her, and not choosing a side.

Of course, this also means that now she has to sit directly in front of him. So he’s in the perfect position to put a gun to her head. If he needs a gun.

_Breathe, Asheleigh._

The more scared Ashe looks the more suspicious Brook is going to get. “Tell you later,” she says, pretending that walking around the car and getting in is taking all her energy.

Brook half flings herself into the driver’s seat. “No, you’ll tell me _now._ You’re both _so_ dead. Is this dangerous? Are we doing something dangerous?”

“Er—” Ashe doesn’t know, exactly.

“It’s only dangerous if we get caught by the wrong people,” Lia says helpfully. “Um…. Let’s try not to get pulled over.”

The car starts.

“What the fuck.” Brook stares at the key, which she is still holding.

“I’m sorry,” Magneto says. “Were we just going to sit around here all afternoon?”


	12. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Charles what?” 
> 
> “Was chronically incapable of not giving advice, whether or not it was needed or wanted. Though I suppose he was uniquely suited to understanding your situation. Because you make people uncomfortable, don’t you? Knowing too much?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, one reads a 500,000 word fanfiction in four days, and misses a week updating. Oops.

Lia has to keep reminding herself that he’s real.

Not a ghost, not a memory. A man, an old man, sitting next to her in Brook’s car. A real man with real answers, who can get them into real fucking trouble, and with real emotions that are absent from his face and present everywhere else.

She knows what grief looks like, and there have been flares of that since the moment he arrived. Determination, too, and something that’s not exactly disgust. It’s almost what Lia’s mom feels like, when she eats too much pie.

None of it looks particularly murderous.

But the feds and Sentinel Services all think he’s a terrorist, so it’s probably safer to pretend they don’t know who he is, at least for now: for Brook’s sake, and plausible deniability. Though it would be easier if Ashe wasn’t allergic to being condescended to. She’s afraid, yeah, but she’s also irritated.

Everyone has faint auras around them. They have since Erik walked in, because Lia had _looked_ as hard as she could: and now, it seems, she can’t stop. The auras aren’t as strong as the trails they leave on the car’s seats, but they’re definitely there, a thin film over their faces and hands. Barely a distortion.

For now.

Lia finds that more frightening than Erik. She knows she should be scared of him, and yet— the fear isn’t coming. She’s a mutant, he fights for mutants. Ashe and Brook are helping mutants. 

New England houses go by out the window, Ashe frets, Brook simmers, and Erik turns to glare at Lia. “Talk,” he says. “How were you in Charles’s head?”

Right. She tells him the same story she told the Guptas, about finding the house, with the extra details. “We thought they were ghosts—” Ashe makes a noise. “Alright, _I_ thought they were ghosts, but then we saw the thing I told you about earlier, where he talked about not having a body. So _then_ we tried to call the people in the address book we found in his office, but none of them picked up.”

Erik smirks a bit. “They’re all in code. In case someone found his address book.”

Oh. That’s… that makes sense.

Lia’s phone quacks like a duck, but when she tries to take it out of her pocket, her palm rubs against the screen. She should buy one of those wallet cases, but in the meantime— it might be nothing, but it might be her mother, in which case they’re going to have to stall. She’s been getting Siri to read her messages, but just in case there’s something Erik or Brook shouldn’t hear…

Shit.

“Hey, Ashe.” Lia hands the phone over the seat. “Can you?”

It’s not ideal, because now it’ll have Ashe’s fear on it, but there it is.

“Your mom wants to know if you’ll be home for dinner,” Ashe says slowly, typing in Lia’s passcode. “Should I tell her no?”

If her parents check her GPS tracking, they’ll know when she’s back in Salem Center. “We can just… get something somewhere. If it gets late.” They’ll drop off Erik, and maybe they can go to the Grind Stone, and pretend they don’t know anything about the old mutant wandering the neighborhood.

Or perhaps he’ll stay with them and tell her important mutant things.

He’s raising an eyebrow. “Do your powers keep you from reading?”

“Yeah.” It’s a relief to have someone see the problem so quickly. “I see how people are feeling on what they’ve touched.”

“That’s a useful power,” he says slowly.

She shouldn’t say it— “You’ve told me that before.”

But she did. She wants to know if he’ll say the same thing.

“I’ve what?”

“I suppose it— I saw a memory, of you—” she was about to say _apologizing to Charles,_ but does she want him to know she knows what he did? She certainly doesn’t want _Brook_ to know. But it’s good she thought of it, good to remember that just because he’s a bit sad and loves Charles it doesn’t mean she should trust him, no matter how much she wants to.

But he’ll know about powers, surely. “And after a moment it wasn’t a memory. I talked to you, and you answered back.”

He’s apprehensive. “And what did I say?”

“You told me war was inevitable.” She tries to say it quietly, but she’s sure that Ashe and Brook are straining to listen. Ashe is going to be mad that Lia didn’t tell her the specifics earlier. “You told me how I could use my powers to hunt. People down. You said that understanding humans too much was dangerous, because it meant…” what was it? “Empathizing with irrational fear. Said I’d end up living as half myself in the hopes I’d be happier.”

Erik flexes his hand. Ashe flinches, but the car doesn’t move anywhere but forwards. “Charles,” he says, and it’s half a sigh.

“Charles what?”

“Was chronically incapable of not giving advice, whether or not it was needed or wanted. Though I suppose he was uniquely suited to understanding your situation. Because you make people uncomfortable, don’t you? Knowing too much?”

The guilt that’s flowing around Ashe is mingling with the fear, and it’s getting hard to see around. “Maybe?”

“Mm. As for why he felt the need to put the words in _my_ mouth, well. Perhaps he’d realized I’d had the right of it all along.”

Lia isn’t sure that’s right, but she’s not about to argue with the metal-controlling man in the metal car. So she settles for not saying anything— because as it turns out, it’s remarkably hard to make polite chitchat with a confused and frightened driver, a not-confused-but-still- _very-_ stressed-out best friend, and one of the most wanted terrorists of the early 2000s.

“These trails you speak of,” Erik says. “Can you tell who left them?”

“With context. I can see where you’re standing, so I can see which one leads to you. Or— my mom is…” _background-sad,_ “often feels a certain way, so if I’m in my house, I can tell if something is hers because it’s sort of… shaded with it. I can’t do that with most people. The harder I look the more I see, but that makes it hard to see other things.” She gestures with her phone. “Like read. Or write.”

“That’s a good start, for— when did you manifest?”

“September.”

“For just a few months. I’m sure in time, you’ll be able to control it: you can choose whether you are looking through a window, or at your own reflection, can you not?”

“I suppose.” She hadn’t thought of it that way. “But if there’s a lot of signs on this hypothetical window…”

“It would take practice. But I imagine the more upset you get trying to read, the harder it becomes to see through that.” He smiles, and it’s not a kind smile, but it’s not a terrible one either. “Try it when you’re relaxed. Not too calm, or the focus won’t come, but not when you’re angry or stressed. There’s a point between rage and serenity, and that is where we do our best work.”

“Huh.” Lia looks at the aura around her hand. It’s a clean window, in this analogy, but what if it gets worse?

But it won’t get worse, because Erik knows how to help. And they’re going to get Charles, who also knows how to help.

They’ll be fine.

It’s well into the afternoon when they pull off the highway, and Brook speaks for the first time since they got in the car. “Where am I going?”

“Turn onto Graymalkin Lane,” Ashe says. She hasn’t said anything in a while, either, and Lia wishes they’d had more than a second to talk alone since yesterday. “Then… you can just park here. Ma— Max, it’s just straight ahead. Guess you won’t have any trouble with the gate, and the house is unlocked.”

Right. He’s going, and they’ll go get food, and this is over.

Erik frowns. “You’re coming with me.”

“I’m what?”

“Either it’s all as you say, in which case, you have nothing to worry about, or it’s not, in which case, _I_ have something to worry about. And I don’t need you running to the police, because I don’t feel like killing any policemen today. So, since you need to stay where I can see you, and as I am going into that house…”

It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic. Especially since Lia wanted to go anyway. She gets out of the car, and since she’s on the driver’s side, she’s nearly smacked in the face by anger and fear when Brook slams the door.

“Why is he talking about killing cops?” she hisses. “What the fuck have you done?”

Lia doesn’t know how to explain that she didn’t expect or want Erik to show up, especially when she’s sort of glad he did. She also doesn’t know how to explain without admitting that she does know who he is. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she doesn’t have a chance, because he and Ashe have come around the car.

“Let’s go,” he says, and Lia looks at Ashe for a moment before following Erik down the road.

* * *

They’re only halfway to the gate when there’s a shout.

This is it. The Sentinels have come. Ashe is going to be sent to jail or worse and her parents are going to be so mad and she’s dragged Brook into all this nonsense—

But it’s not the police. It’s not even MRO Bill.

It’s Mrs. Crown, walking down her driveway. She’s holding a white thing in the air and it takes Ashe a second to realize that it’s a gun, holy _shit it_ _’s a gun,_ and another second to realize it’s plastic or 3D printed or something which means she was prepared for this and she _had_ been watching them and Magneto is going to think they led him into a trap and he’s going to kill them all—

“Hands down, Magneto,” Crown says.

Brook chokes. “What—”

Something tugs around Ashe’s neck— her necklace, the end of which has turned into a point. It flies at Mrs. Crown, who swings a leg up and knocks it aside with a flexibility more suited to an Olympian gymnast than an elderly government teacher. The chain circles back around, joined by what appears to be a handful of loose change, wrapping around her ankle and _yanking—_ the gun falls and Ashe flinches back, but it doesn’t fire. Mrs. Crown balances upside down on one hand, her foot shrinking until it’s free, and she flips forward to kick Magneto hard in the knee. He stumbles, and she gets an arm around his neck.

“Get out of here,” she says, and she’s talking to Ashe, Brook and Lia now. “Whatever the hell he’s told you, it’s bullshit.”

What the actual fuck is going on?

Like.

What the fuck.

Lia’s mouth is hanging open, and she looks back at Mrs. Crown’s driveway.

“You’re—” she starts. “You’re not…”

Ashe’s necklace wraps around Mrs. Crown’s neck, tightening as she tightens her arm around Magneto’s. Brook’s car creaks, and Ashe wonders if he’s about to tear it apart for scrap.

“Hello to you too, Mystique,” he rasps.

A car drives through the intersection at the end of the lane, and for a moment Ashe thinks that they’re going to be caught here, watching two people strangle each other to death— but Mrs. Crown lets Magneto go, picking up her gun instead. “Get in the house.”

The necklace falls, and Ashe scoops it up, even though it’s completely misshapen now. It had been a gift from her Aunt Mary. She’s going to have to pretend she lost it. 

Lia looks at the house in question. The one they had been planning to toilet paper, back when this all started. “We don’t—”

“Get _in_ the _house,_ ” Mrs. Crown repeats, and Lia might be suspicious, but Ashe still has the proper amount of fear, thanks ever so, so she tugs Brook up the stairs.

“Magneto?” Brook hisses. “ _Magneto?_ Did you know?”

What is the worse answer? “Yeah.”

“You. Are. So. Dead.”

Mrs. Crown’s house doesn’t _look_ like the house of some undercover agent. It looks like an old lady’s living room, with doilies and magazines and everything. _Mystique,_ he’d called her— which one is Mystique? Ashe doesn’t have time to ponder that or wonder if her social studies teacher is really going to kill her, because no sooner have the adults followed them in than every knife flies out of the kitchen at once and for a moment she can only think of that meme with the cat and the blades.

“Put them down, Erik.”

“You first.”

The gun lands on the coffee table with a _clack_ , and everyone jumps again.

If Ashe and Brooklyn die here their parents are never, ever going to get over it. They should have quit while nothing mattered: Ashe can live with splitting headaches and not knowing what happened to Ellie because at least then she won’t be killing her best friend and sister as well—

“It’s good to see you,” says Magneto, as the knives form a pile on the table.

“Fuck you,” says Mrs. Crown. And then she _ripples,_ flakes of skin lifting up and settling down until she’s not their teacher at all, but a much younger woman covered in brilliant blue scales. The cardigan and slacks strain around her arms and legs.

Brook’s mouth falls open. “Ho _ly_ _shit._ ”

This only makes sense in a Black Lagoon, _my teacher is an alien_ sort of way. Mrs. Crown has been at their school for decades— maybe as long as this woman had been alive. How could she have possibly—

Unless she wasn’t. There was a blue girl in Charles's memories, too. This woman's mother?

“Ah, to be young again,” Mrs. Crown says, cracking her knuckles. “Well, young _er._ Same can’t be said for you.” Magneto doesn’t dignify that with a response. “Miss Sidner, when I tried to warn you to be careful, I really did not mean _go look for high profile mutants._ ”

Lia scowls at the floor. “You could have been less cryptic.” 

Magneto seems amused. Only Lia would know if he really is. “You all know each other?”

There’s a sound as though someone is shuffling a deck of cards, and then the blue woman is Mrs. Crown again. “I taught these two government,” she says, pointing to Lia and Ashe.

“What happened to the real Mrs. Crown?” Ashe manages. “You’re not old enough to have been here the whole time.”

“She’s fine. She’s was persuaded to enjoy a nice retirement in the Cayman Islands.”

Magneto snorts.

Oh, god. They’ve killed Mrs. Crown and took her place. And Ashe can never tell anyone, because she’ll sound like one of those anti-mutant conspiracy theorists on Fox News. Alex Jones would have a _field day._

“Also, I was born in the thirties.” She points through the doorway into the kitchen. “Go. Sit.”

Is she scarier as the teacher or blue? Ashe isn’t sure, but she does as ordered, pulling Brook behind her and trying to keep Lia in her line of sight. Magneto does not sit, instead lurking near the door while Mrs. Crown paces.

“Now tell me what the hell you’re doing.”

“They say that Charles appears to be haunting his own house.”

Mrs. Crown blinks a few times. “Of course. Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be.”

“Because I _felt him die._ ” Magneto looks around. “A word in private? You three, stay there. I’ll know if you leave, or touch your phones.”

“Fine.” Mrs. Crown steps back into the living room to collect the gun, and he raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t object. They step into a side room and close the door.

Ashe and Lia move at the same time, slipping out of the chairs and pressing their ears against it.

“Did you feel it?”

“Ssh— the kids—”

Magneto follows up with something in German.

“He says Charles was in his head,” Lia whispers. “He went to meet with— with— Storm and… Pig?” She frowns, and increasingly agitated German keeps coming from the other room.

“What are they saying?” Ashe hisses.

“Something about… being Healed?”

“What—”

Lia makes a sharp gesture with her hand, and Ashe pulls away from the door. It’s stupid to listen if she’s not going to understand it— she’ll just have to hope Lia remembers it later. And actually tells Ashe. If they’re like, alive.

They’re not going to die.

Ashe is just being dramatic.

Probably.

Brook looks dramatic, too, huddled against the chair. Ashe so rarely has the upper hand with her sister, and she wished she was enjoying it. Instead she just feels guilty. They should have found some other way to get to Connecticut.

Although Ashe isn’t sure how they could have possible factored in Magneto, or Mrs. Crown being a secret mutant, into their risk calculation.

If she’d thought they were in over their heads at the _house_ _…_

“Are you okay?” she asks Brook quietly.

“No,” Brook says. “Thank you for asking.” She’s got her hands folded on the table, knuckles nearly white. “I asked you over and over to tell me the full story, and every time you said you had you were _lying,_ and now the leadership of the Brotherhood of Mutants is arguing right in front of us, and if we get out of here alive we could be brought up on _terrorism charges_ and it could _ruin our lives_ because, what, you were looking for a thrill? You lied to me, to mom and dad, over and over and _over,_ for weeks.”

Her sister panicking actually makes it a little easier for Ashe to remember that they’re minors, they hadn’t gone looking for Magneto, and he hadn’t given them much of a choice. Surely they wouldn’t get their lives ruined over _that_. Except the government is really fucking weird about anything mutant related.

“Are you mad that I did it, or mad that I didn’t tell you about it sooner?”

“Did you not once stop and think maybe you should tell _someone_?”

“I did tell you,” Ashe points out. “And it wasn’t a _thrill._ I mean, it was when we went in on Halloween, but when we figured out what was happening…” Lia’s still listening at the door, but Ashe lowers her voice anyway. “Where else was Lia going to find help? They took Shawn away; they took Ellie away. We can’t talk about mutants to _any_ one. We don’t know where Ellie and Shawn are, or whether they’ll ever be free again— and, on top of that, it’s getting harder and harder for her to see. We thought maybe if we could find the X-Men, they’d be able to help.”

It sounds so juvenile when she says it. As though the X-Men aren’t going to be aware of kids being taken out of schools. They’re probably already doing what they can.

But there’s been no news of them.

“And now we think there might be a man alive in that house. We can’t just _leave_ him. I promise we did not expect Magneto to show up. I thought if we were lucky, the Guptas would give us a phone number or something. But he—” she checks the door. “He was in love with Charles Xavier. I’m sure he also wants him back, and I don’t think he’s going to hurt us. And _that_ _’s_ the full story. Pinky swear.”

“Fucking Christ,” Brook says.

“So please, please don’t try and call the police, or tell anyone. We need his help, Lia needs their help, and… and I think Charles Xavier might have messed with my head, and _I_ need his help.”

Brook presses her thumbs against her closed eyes. She’s probably trying not to cry. “Is it bad I kind of wish you’d just needed an abortion after all?”

On the scheme of things, “yeah, that’s pretty bad. We were just trying to help people.”

“Cool,” Brook says. “I don’t care.”

* * *

“I’m surprised you’re the one they sent,” Mystique says. She speaks German more slowly than Erik does, and Lia is grateful for it. “Oh— you’re not, are you?”

“There’s no need. If the girls are wrong, if Charles isn’t there, what good would it have done anyone to know there was hope? Once I know what’s happening, I’ll know if I’ll need help.”

Lia has a much harder time reading tone in other languages, but she’s pretty sure that he doesn’t think he’ll need help.

“You still hear Charles’s name and come running.”

“And _you_ _’re_ still hiding in someone else’s skin.”

“You know—” Mystique says in English, and then stops. There’s a shuffling, and if they’re going to fight again, Lia should probably back away from the door. “If you had been healed, I would have at least… grace killed you,” she finishes in German.

“Then you saved my life twice.”

A longer pause. What have they walked into here? Mystique was Brotherhood, clearly. They had a falling out, after… healing?

_Cured._

That must be what they mean.

“I suppose I did.”

“You also sent the army to kill me.”

“You lived.” It’s hard to tell if Mystique thinks this is a good or bad thing. “Tell me about the house.”

“Can you not tell me? You’ve been living across the street from it for… how long?”

“Good try.”

Silence.

“I’ll tell you mine,” Magneto says wryly.

Another long pause. Lia can’t risk taking her ear off the door to peek through the keyhole, so she just has to wait.

“After I was healed… they thought I was beaten, and sent me to a relatively low security jail. I was there for… maybe a few months, before my powers started to come back. I couldn’t have shown any sign of it, or they’d have put me back in supermax.” The last word she says in English. “I don’t think I slept for three days, I was so worried about slipping up. It was like being a child again. But once I was sure of myself, I turned into a guard and walked out. I’m sure they understood what had happened after an hour, but by then, I was free. I impersonated a few people at the bank, and got some money, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. There was no sign of you. Also, I hated you.”

What had Magneto done? Lia glances back to where Ashe and Brook are talking, but she doesn’t have time to give them an update.

“After a while I realized I was exactly where I started, when I first broke into the Xaviers’ kitchen. I needed… something to do. I infiltrated a mutant detention center near LA, freed a group of people— one of them told me Charles had died a second time— but once the government realized I was on the loose they started DNA scanning. So, it was back on the run for a long time, until a couple years ago, when a kid here caught fire at school. With all the media frenzy, I thought maybe one of our people, or even one of Charles’s people, would come. And then I arrived, and I realized I knew the place.”

“You never noticed you’d forgotten?”

“I’d gotten so good at not thinking about growing up with Charles. And without having to worry about the X-Men, I didn’t think much about the house. Never thought about where it was because of course I knew where it was. It wasn’t until I got here that I realized I’d forgotten what street it was on. I found it eventually, of course, but I didn’t go inside. I didn’t see the point. I can’t use _Cerebro_. I didn’t have jet fuel, and it’s not as though I had anywhere to go in the—” here she says a word that Lia doesn’t recognize. And _Cerebro_ isn’t a German word. “I thought I’d stay close, keep an eye on it. The real Victoria was all too happy to let me impersonate her while she went to the tropics— I set her up with a fake identity, and text her when I need to know something. It’s a lot easier than killing her— high school teacher has the same learning curve as the Senate, in case you were wondering. I’m actually more qualified to teach government than she ever was, considering.”

“And you just stayed? Watching the house, looking out for privileged bastards?”

Hey.

“And their parents. The anxieties of these people are more likely to become law. They sent in a former _Fed_ to patrol the school.” She snorts. “I hated that school when I went there.”

“You attended the local school?”

“For about a week. Charles made them forget all about it.”

“Then we’re all here chasing what Charles made us forget. Any more mutants in the mix?”

“Hey.” There’s the shuffling card sound again. “Stay away from my kids.”

“ _Your_ kids? Since when do you like kids?”

“Who says I don’t like kids?”

“Spoken to your son lately?”

“Have you spoken to yours?”

There’s another long silence.

“What happened to _you?_ ” Mystique asks. “You’d better have a _damn good_ story.” She says the last part in English as well.

Magneto answers her in German. “I came to visit Charles a few times, after my powers started coming back. Then I was in Maine. I helped everyone from the school hide in our caves near New York. The last few months I’ve been with a group trying to smuggle some mutant refugees to Canada. We ran into Sentinel Services a couple weeks ago. They didn’t recognize me, but we were lying low near Hartford when I got the call about the school.”

“You just left them?”

“They’ll be fine for a day. And they will be better off if we’re successful, because I _do_ want the—” and then he says the word Lia doesn’t know again. “I didn’t know about Charles when I first arrived.”

They’re either silent, or they’re whispering.

“How the fuck did we get here?”

“We lost. We let the humans divide us. We lost our resources and allies. Come with me. Let’s get them back.” 

Something creaks, Lia scrambles backwards like a very confused crab, barely making it to the table before the door opens and they both come back out. From the way Mystique is looking at her, she either suspects Lia was eavesdropping, or something else is afoot.

“Did you run into any traps, at the school?” Mystique asks. “Did you get into the basement?”

Ashe and Lia shake their heads.

“I told them to come with us,” Magneto says. Then, in German, “The longer they’re left alone the more likely they are to turn us in. And if it’s a trap—”

“You think they set up a trap? They’re teenage girls.”

“Exactly. You remember Charles’s teenage girls. But I suppose we could leave the human ones here.”

Would that be safer? Probably, but Lia doesn’t want to go in alone. “Ashe is the one who mapped the house. She knows it better than me.”

She realizes her mistake when they both turn to look at her.

“ _Sprichst du Deutsch?_ _”_ Mystique asks, mouth twitching.

Lia presses her lips together.

Mystique turns to Magneto and says something in Polish. Fucking Polish. Lia only catches Ashe’s name, and _together._

Maybe she _should_ have done her Polish homework.

“Fine,” Magneto says in English. He turns to Brook. “If we don’t make contact in six hours…” he looks around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers at random. _“Where_ are your pens?”

“Drawer by the fridge. No— not that one, the top one.”

“Right.” His voice immediately returns to his more menacing tone. “If we don’t make contact in six hours, call this number. What I’m writing down isn’t the number— it starts up, can you remember that? One up, one down, one up, one down. So it starts four-three-four, not five-two-five.”

“Who does that reach?” Ashe asks.

“Help. In case we all get trapped inside a Hell in our own minds. And if you call any _other_ numbers, I’ve got your sister and your friend in a house that the human police will not be able to navigate.”

Neither part of that sentence is comforting at all.

“Six hours?” Brook repeats. “It’s already three, they’ll expect us home eventually. What the hell am I supposed to say?”

“Bad traffic,” Magneto suggests. “Stopping for a movie. Think of something.”

“Here.” Lia hands her phone over as well. It’s basically useless to her at this point anyway— to text, she’d have to dictate to Siri, and the idea of doing so in present company is humiliating.

Her parents are never letting her out of the house again.

“And I’m just supposed to wait here, while you walk off with my baby sister into who the fuck knows what?”

The metal table leg splits, and a thin part wrapping around Brook’s foot. “There. I’ve kidnapped you. An alibi, if you need one.”

“It’ll be fine. We probably won’t even be six hours. Don’t worry about it,” Ashe says, entirely covered in worry. Lia tries to give both Grants a reassuring smile, but she’s not sure that it works.

“Feel free to help yourself to anything you can reach.” Mystique’s offer isn’t as mean as it sounds: the kitchen is small enough that Brook can easy reach both the fridge and the sink. “And don’t pee on my chair.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [you all know the knife cat meme, I assume](https://i.imgflip.com/12ic6x.jpg)


	13. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The real Erik crosses his arms.
> 
> “My turtlenecks were not that tight,” he says.
> 
> Mystique snorts. “They were.”

Lia squeezes through the gate, followed by Ashe and a child-sized Mystique. Erik watches them, unimpressed, before he raises his hand: the bars of the gate bend outward, giving him a space large enough to pass through without contorting.

He brushes by them, strutting up the walk.

Terror trails behind him.

Whether he’s afraid of what he will see, or what he won’t see, Lia isn’t sure. Ten years seems like a long time to feel this strongly about someone, but then, what does she know? He’s known Charles for fifty years, and she’s only fourteen.

She reaches for Ashe’s hand as they draw closer.

Mystique is the only one who isn’t scared, but maybe she’s become immune. Whatever’s here can’t be worse than being in jail, or impersonating a Senator, or freeing mutant prisoners, or all the other stuff she’d been talking about. She’s everything Lia had hoped the X-Men would be— and maybe Mystique hadn’t had the resources to help Ellie before, but they can get her back now, right?

Erik hesitates at the front stoop.

“It was always a bit overgrown, those last few years,” he says. “I’m not sure this is worse.”

“Sharon’s rolling over in her grave. But I suppose Charles couldn’t keep the gardeners forever. Ever wonder how he calculated depreciation on Cerebro?”

Lia doesn’t know what depreciation means, so she keeps walking, pulling Ashe along with her. The other two might remember this place from the old days, but she and Ashe are the ones that know what to expect, and she doesn’t want them to think she’s afraid.

The entryway is quiet, with only faint trails remaining from Lia and Ashe’s last visit. They’ll be covered soon by the feelings from Mystique and Erik— something that’s adjacent to sadness, but not quite the same thing.

“I used to think this place was a palace,” Mystique says.

It doesn’t look like one now. And it doesn’t look much like a haunted house anymore, either; not with the afternoon sun coming through the windows, and not a figure in sight. With this many mutants Lia had thought that it might look how it did when she came by herself; or at least there’d be someone to greet them. But they haven’t been here in almost a week, so maybe Charles left, or maybe it wasn’t Charles at all and—

There’s a noise coming from down the hall, in the direction of the kitchen. A sound like someone moving.

Mystique turns into a blonde woman, and Lia holds Ashe’s hand tighter. Just because no one came in through the front door, it doesn’t mean they didn’t get in from one of the side entrances. If it’s the police—or someone who might recognize Erik— they’re fucked— _we were just looking around,_ Lia practices, _nothing suspicious—_

Instead of stepping out of sight, Erik starts marching towards the noise, Mystique half a step behind him. Lia takes a deep breath, probably getting a full face of asbestos because they are not wearing their masks, and then she and Ashe follow. Police, fellow trespassers, maybe the Guptas told another one of the X-Men, or it’s Sentinel Services and they’re all as good as dead, but they’ve got Mystique and Erik with them and they can _fight,_ right?

But Sentinel Services is not in the kitchen.

It’s the blue girl they saw a flash of in the study.

Of course.

The two older mutants draw up short, staring at what is clearly Mystique as a child.

“She’s not real,” Ashe says, unnecessarily— the apparition walks towards them, growing taller as she does, until they’re faced with a younger Erik in a black shirt.

The real Erik crosses his arms.

“My turtlenecks were not that tight,” he says.

Mystique snorts. “They were.”

The fake Erik looks at Mystique and then turns blue again. And then she’s Hank, and a blond man is standing next to him. The blond man is holding something— maybe a newspaper. The details are long lost, save for the word _MURDERED_ in bold type.

“She wasn’t wrong to kill him,” he’s saying.

Hank shakes his head. “Alex—”

“Trask was rounding up mutants out of the military. Using them for god knows what— Sean’s parents told me he was KIA, but he wasn’t. He got carted off by Stryker, and disappeared. None of them came back. If the Cassidys got a body, it means they killed him, and it means that they probably killed all the others. Trask deserved to die more than anyone I killed over there. We _are_ at war, so for the love of God, Charles, give up on the drugs—” Alex is changing, turning blue again, and Hank is gone and there’s only Mystique. Naked and blue and towering over the rest of them.

Lia doesn’t know where to look. Neither does Ashe— Lia can almost feel the embarrassment on her hand.

“Raven,” Charles’s voice says.

“Don’t call me that.” There’s a faint buzzing around Mystique’s words.

“Alex thought you’d been caught by Trask Industries.”

“I was.” For a moment, everything is gray. “I escaped. Thanks for your help.”

“If I’d known—”

“I’m _fine,_ Charles!” something flashes red. A scream in the distance. _Found— Erik— Pentagon— free— rescue—_

“Enough,” the real Mystique says, turning her back on her younger self. “He’d be in Cerebro. We go back to the elevator.”

It’s warmer out in the hall, and warmer still the closer they get to the entryway. One moment Lia’s snow boots are on the hardwood floor of the mansion, and the next there’s sand under her feet and missiles are barreling towards them through the ceiling. She dives for the edge of the hallway— for a classroom, a doorway, _anything_ — Ashe’s hand falls away, and Erik throws up an arm.

 _It_ _’s not real,_ Lia thinks, even as she feels the heat across her face. _It_ _’s not real, it’s not real—_

The smoke from the missiles is replaced by everyone’s feelings. All shock and grief and fear and Erik is standing in front of them in a yellow and black suit, with a helmet on his head and his hand in the air.

“You abandoned me!” he yells.

Real Erik takes a step towards him, but Mystique grabs his shoulder. “It’s not real.”

“I know.”

Lia grits her teeth and takes another step forward. They just have to get to the elevator, next to the study. It’ll all be fine once they do. They’re almost there, she thinks: if only she could see the walls...

Someone is walking down the beach towards them. 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lia says. Because that’s Hanna, moving faster than she had since Lia started middle school. Hair curled, lipstick just slightly askew. 

“What are you doing here, Liliana?”

 _Finally._ Months of exploring, of looking for answers, and she’s _here._

“Grandma?”

“Come, let’s get out of here.” Hanna’s hands feel just how Lia remembers them. “There’s nothing to see here. I’ll make you some French toast.”

She could go, and follow her grandmother back to the old kitchen and eat something that isn’t French toast. She could stay here with her for as long as Charles can pull the illusion from her mind— the last two months have been awful, she could just have this, just for a few minutes—

 _Why can_ _’t she have this?_

She knows why.

“You’re not here.”

Her grandmother smiles gently. “Of course not. You didn’t want me when I was real. You wanted me to die.”

Oh, oh God. “I didn’t!”

“You did. You looked at me in that hospital bed, and you wondered how much longer it would be, and if Sarah would let you keep my locket.”

Lia is wearing it now, and she refuses to let her hand go to her throat. “That’s not how it happened.” It was a thought, tangled up amidst other thoughts. About the hours her parents had spent at the hospital, about the horrible things her grandmother had shouted, that her parents hadn’t wanted her to hear but she’d heard about anyway. She hadn’t been Hanna anymore, not really, and Lia—

Lia had thought it would be easier, once she died.

She had.

And doesn’t that make her the worst sort of person?

“Come along, now.” Hanna’s shirtsleeve rides up as she tugs on Lia’s hand, showing her tattoo, clearer than ever.

14728.

“That’s not right.” She tries to focus, tries to remember what it had actually been, but all she can recall is a blur, stretched by age and time— and now everything is blurring, and then there’s ash in the air. The beach is gone, palm trees turning into tall fences. “That’s not your number.”

Erik steps forward. His movements are slow, now. As if he’s remembered his age for the first time today. “That’s because it’s mine.” His eye twitches, and steel walls slam down around them, leaving the four of them trapped in a metal cell. Hanna is nowhere in sight.

“Grandma?” Lia asks, trying desperately not to cry.

“Hey,” Ashe says, beside her once again. She pats big splotches of concern onto Lia's shoulder and arm. “It’s okay.” Then, to the other two, “how did that happen? It’s never been like that before.”

“We aren’t only in Charles’s head.” Mystique watches the wall, which has parted to let someone through. “He’s in ours.”

It takes a moment for the figure to reconcile as Connie Grant. She’s at her most polished, hair perfectly in place, like she just came from a night at the theater. Her heels are making a click-clop that echoes, even though it’s not a space where it should be echoing.

“What on earth are you doing?” she asks.

Ashe’s quails in the face of her mother. “Er—”

“We’re going to be late for the ballet.”

“The ballet?”

Somewhere, orchestra music is playing a sad, warbling tune that Lia thinks she heard in a Barbie movie.

Connie reaches them, pulling Ashe’s hand away from Lia’s.

_Why don_ _’t you want us here, Charles?_

“Do try to stop oogling the ballerinas,” Connie says. “It does so embarrass us.”

“Mom—”

The music is getting louder, and the smell of smoke is back. Erik’s walls are falling as more people gather around them— a little blue boy with a tail, calling _mama, mama—_ a girl of around eight, with birds on her shoulders, a woman with a silver-haired baby in her arms.

Erik raises a hand at them.

“Don’t,” Mystique says.

“They’re not—”

“I know.” But she grabs his shoulders, shoving him so they’re facing what Lia thinks is big room, and not the front door. But she isn’t sure anymore, because they’ve gotten so turned around: ahead of them a man in a Nazi uniform with a hole in his forehead holds out a bloody coin, Ellie screams while basketballs fall around her, a priest waves a Bible and a woman says _where you go I shall also go._ Behind them, a faceless crowd holds blank signs. They all press forwards, coated in fear, and Lia’s in a crush of people, and she can’t see Ashe, she can’t see Erik or Mystique, can’t hear anything over the shouting of voices.

 _Stop it,_ she thinks, _stop it, stop it!_ But there’s no avoiding them, these emotionless, fractured memories. She even looks for Hanna, but she can’t see her. A ballerina flings herself into the sea of people, and another one dives after her, but they leave nothing behind—

They all look like fear, but it’s not their own. They’re just tinged with Lia’s, with Ashe’s, with Erik’s and Mystique’s. It’s thicker over to her right, and she can almost recognize the traces of Ashe within it. Lia steps through a crowd of men in suits, and—

“Lia?” Ashe says. Lia turns, but Ashe isn’t talking to her. She’s a few feet away, looking at another Lia: one who is far more beautiful and far more angry.

“Ashe!”

Ashe half turns, forehead creased. “No, what—”

The fake Lia’s face is twisted in disgust, but maybe that’s just Ashe’s feelings, covering her face, because Lia is having a harder and harder time seeing through them—

“Lia,” Ashe says again, but this time from behind her. And if Lia stands on tip-toes, she can see at least four Ashes in the crowd, and several Eriks. She can track the real Mystique by her anger to where she’s swinging at a group of men in labcoats — and the real Ashe, the one in the argument with the fake Lia, is getting farther away, dodging a stray ballerina—

Of course.

They’re all lost.

They don’t know which ones are real.

Because they can't see what Lia can.

Avoiding Mystique’s elbows, Lia catches sight of a trail of horror and follows it to its source _:_ and she reaches _through_ the crowd, her hand passing through something that looks like a robot, and grabs Erik’s arm.

He’s staring down a group of mutants in jumpsuits, and Lia shakes him. “Erik!” she says. “Erik. _Magneto!_ ”

He only turns his head a little to look at her.

“The elevator!” she has to shout over the noise, even though there isn’t noise at all because _this isn_ _’t real. We’re in a house._ She tries to hold the image in her mind, hoping Charles will get the hint— walls and windows and old stairs, currently hidden by bodies and fog and smoke and flashes of a tropical sky. “Where is it? You have to get it moving.”

“The elevator—”

“You can feel it, right?”

Steel doors slam down around them again. It only cuts off the screaming for a second before the walls break under the onslaught, but Erik “yes, it’s not far, I’ve got it, get the others—”

But there are no others.

She and Erik are standing on the beach, a submarine suspended over their heads.

“Rage and serenity,” says Erik’s voice, but it’s echoing in tandem, and Lia reaches out in the direction she last saw Ashe, and, _there_ —

“Ashe!”

She’s next to them now, Lia can see her just enough to notice her flinch. “I’m sorry—”

“Hey! It’s me. The real me.” She keeps one hand on Erik and one on Ashe, _looking_ as hard as she can through the haze. It’s easier if she doesn’t look for shapes. Just feelings. At the reflection, instead of through the glass. “Mystique is a little to your right.” Mystique isn’t afraid like the rest of them. Just fury, fury, fury. “See if you can grab her.”

There’s some sort of bird-man waving a cloak in between Ashe and Mystique, and Ashe shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“He’s not there, Ashe, just ignore him!”

“ _You_ might not be here!”

Lia wants to shake her, but instead she squeezes Ashe’s hand as hard as she possibly can. Hard enough to make her knuckles hurt. “I’m here,” she says.

And Ashe reaches out, a trail of _relief_ behind her.

Like some odd game of Red Rover, the four of them shuffle through the beach-turned-wasteland-turned-ruins.

“I can’t see,” Lia admits.

“There’s a door,” Magneto says. “I’ve got it—” something creaks, they move forward again—

And then everything goes silent.

Lia signs in relief, looking at the others. They’re here, visible in front of her— Magneto still in his jacket, Ashe, near tears, and Mystique, who changes from blonde to blue with a sound like rain. For a moment, Lia thinks, _we made it._

Except, they aren’t in an elevator. The room they’re in is much too large for that: it looks more like the planetarium Lia used to go to with her dad. But instead of a dome of stars, the ceiling is made of rusty metal panels, and they’re standing on a platform looking down at a deep, deep, _deep_ drop.

“Charles,” Erik says. “Charles, stop this.”

And there he is. This Charles Xavier is not faceless, like every version Lia has seen. He sits perfectly clear at the end of the walkway, mouth set in a firm line.

He’s here. He’s here, they’ve found him, he’s been here the whole time and they can stop this insanity—

But Erik isn’t rushing towards him, like he had the last time Charles had come back. Instead he’s backpedaling, pulling the others with him as Charles starts to ripple.

“Don’t let it control you,” Charles says.

Pieces drift off his suit and into the darkness.

Somewhere back in time, a man screams, and another man yells “ _Charles—_ _”_

Then he explodes, and the floor drops out from under them, and Lia covers her eyes because this time it’s real, they’re falling, why are they _falling—_

“Got the elevator moving,” Erik says.

It does look like an elevator now. The walls are comfortingly close.

“Is that—” Mystique’s face changes into that of a young white woman for just a moment before settling blue again. “Is that what it looked like?”

Erik turns his open palm to the ground, and the floor steadies. “Yes.”

“Ah.” It’s hard to tell, with her blue face, but Lia thinks Mystique looks ill. _Lia_ certainly does, at the sight of human flesh tearing itself apart— where did the bones go? Did they splinter into fragments, so small no one could see? Is that a weird thing to wonder about?

“Soo.” Ashe rubs shaking hands together. “This is the elevator. Nice. We could never get it to work. Nice… elevator powers.”

Erik’s face doesn’t change. “Thank you.” When he turns his hand, the doors open into a long metal hallway. For a moment, it looks bright and white— but no, of course it’s dark. There hasn’t been power down here for years.

Ashe, the only one to have kept her phone, turns on the flashlight.

But it’s still quiet, and Lia appreciates that. “ _This_ is the basement?”

“Mm,” Erik says. “We just need to get to Cerebro.”

“You keep saying that. You mean Cerebro like... brain, but in Spanish?”

Right. Ashe took Spanish.

Mystique shrugs. “It amplifies his telepathy. Makes it practically limitless. Annoying as hell, in case you were wondering.”

_“Mystique!”_

“Look, if Charles is there, he can make them forget if they weren’t supposed to know this, and if Charles _isn’t_ there, Cerebro’s useless.” 

“I’m sorry,” Ashe says, “But who the fuck called it _brain?_ _”_

“That would be Hank.”

“Dumb name,” Ashe mutters, shining her light on one of the doors. “Danger Room. Hank name that one too?”

“Alex, I think,” Mystique says, and then jumps backwards— the blond man from earlier is running by them, his chest glowing. He reaches something at the end of the hallway, and then an explosion tears through the room. For a moment everything is bright and hot and then it’s dark again and the man is still there, still running. “Hey, his little brother still around? Scott?”

“No,” Erik says, somewhere ahead of them.

“Oh.” Pause. “Well, I suppose he did try to kill me a lot.”

“Never liked him much,” Erik agrees. “This basement runs on a backup generator, if only I can just… _hah._ _”_ A dull clunking sound echoes throughout the room, and then the real lights turn on, blinding bright.

The hall is longer than Lia had thought it was. Maybe bigger than the footprint of the actual house. “This is under a _school?_ _”_

They’d barely scratched the surface up there. Literally. No wonder there weren’t stairs— or, no, there must be stairs. Those tunnels Nate had talked about.

“Charles was always of the opinion that permitting and zoning laws were for other people,” Magneto says. He reaches out a hand towards the door at the end of the hall, tilting it back and forth slightly as though he’s feeling for something.

“Shouldn’t I—” Mystique starts—

And that’s when an alarm goes off.

Next to them, the door to the Danger Room slides open.

* * *

The room is huge, domed, and covered with panels: a bit like the room that Ashe had just seen Charles Xavier blow up in, except the floor is flat, and the panels are moving.

“Simulation beginning.” The robotic voice seems to be coming from everywhere. The panels are changing: flipping over, making it look as though they’re on a damaged indoor cul-de-sac. There are some old cars, a shed, a tree that can’t possibly be real because it just _grew up from the floor—_

Ashe assumes that it’s in their minds, just like everything upstairs, but Magneto is striding into the room, glowering at the ceiling.

“End simulation,” he says. “Override.”

The only sound is the a heavy thud, like a footstep.

“ _Override,_ _”_ Magneto says again. “Tap out! Mein _Gott,_ Charles!”

“It’s not real,” Lia is muttering. “It’s not real, it’s not real—”

Crown interrupts her. “It’s real this time.”

“What?”

Yep, that’s a _giant fucking robot_ walking through an opening in the wall, staring down at them with glowing eyes. And in one corner of her mind that’s not overcome with panic, Ashe wonders why they would program a robot with fake eyes. They don’t need them to see, not when they could put cameras all over it.

She looks back at the hallway. The nice, safe looking hallway that a man had just blown up in. “Should we run?”

“It’s going to be a lot easier to shut it down in here—we’re fish in a barrel in the hallway. Consider this a preview for history class. A gen-u-ine 1970s Sentinel,” Mrs. Crown says, sounding more cheerful than she has all day. What the fuck, what the fuck _ever._ Ashe is so glad that Brooklyn didn’t come but, _fuck_ , she wants her sister, she wants her mom— the real mom, not the fear!Mom she’d met upstairs— but they’re not here, and it’ll be fine, because she’s with one of the most powerful mutants in the world.

Magneto can just crush it, and—

“There’s no metal in it,” he says.

Mrs. Crown tilts her head from side to side, cracking her neck. “He probably had a failsafe connected to the generator, in case you tried to use your powers on Cerebro’s doors.”

“Perhaps.”

“Maybe this is about that time I broke into it and poisoned him?” 

_“Perhaps._ ” The cars, at least, are metal: Magneto sends one flying at the robot, and it stumbles, but it doesn’t fall.

And then it raises a giant fucking gun.

“Scatter!” Crown shouts, growing smaller and diving to one side. Lia shoves Ashe in the opposite direction, and a blast hits the ground where they were just standing, so close it melts a gash in Lia’s jacket.

“Shit shit shit shit shit shit!” They keep running around the edge of the room, jumping over jagged sidewalk, and Ashe can hear the sound of blasts hitting the ground behind them.

“You were right,” Lia gasps. “It _is_ Hogwarts, there’s shit that can kill you all over the place—”

The robot is kneecapped by a car door, and Ashe was glad, before, that Lia wasn’t the kind of mutant who could cause massive destruction, but she sure as fuck wouldn’t mind having Nate, or Shawn, or Ellie here right about now.

They duck down behind one of the cars, and when the blasts stop coming their way, they peek over the edge. Magneto’s strategy seems to be _throw pieces of car at it,_ which slows it down, but isn’t cracking the thick plastic body. Crown is pulling its fire, dodging and diving as she gets close, grabbing at its foot and yanking at some tubing. It shakes her off, and she changes as she lands, hands and feet enlarging and claws growing out of her knuckles. As some combination of Logan and Hank, she bounces back again, climbing up the robot’s side.

“Lift!” A piece of car engine flies up next to her: she grabs it, soars upwards, but the robot turns and fires— she goes down, and this time, she doesn’t bounce.

“She’s hurt,” Lia says, and then Ashe loses the plot because the robot turns back towards them and fires and she and Lia scramble. But they haven’t coordinated— Lia goes left and Ashe goes right, closer to the door, and their shelter is crushed and she’s going to die here, she’s going to die here and Brook is going to have to tell her parents and they’re going to be so angry— she’s going to die here and one of her last memories is going to be of that fake Lia telling her off for being a disgusting creep—

Ashe is going to die here, and Lia’s already on the other side of the room, so she’s going to die alone—

Except the robot has followed Lia instead. She takes shelter behind a broken shed, and Ashe is left standing, far from all three mutants. The Sentinel doesn’t even look at her.

_Sentinels._

The mutant seeking robots after which Sentinel Services were named.

Oh.

Oh, holy shit.

Mrs. Crown gets up again, just in time get a robot foot to the chest. She lands near Lia with a loud “MOTHERFUCKER.”

On the other side of the room, Magneto is waving his arms like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, trying to wind bits of car around its feet.

He’s an old man in jeans and a jacket, but he’s Magneto. Uncorrupted by Charles’s memories, not in disguise as a cranky old man.

This is the man who picked up the Golden Gate bridge like it was nothing. The man who held a government in terror.

It’s the first moment that Ashe isn’t afraid of him.

She scrambles towards him, not bothering to find cover, and the Sentinel doesn’t fire at her. _Can_ _’t hurt me,_ she thinks. _Can_ _’t hurt me, can’t hurt me—_ but they can, because a blast aimed at Magneto grazes her arm, and she drops to the ground, rolling on the melting synthetic and _Jesus fucking Christ it hurts,_ but the Sentinel turns to fire at Crown and Ashe gets back up, ducking behind the truck Magneto has been shredding.

“How do we kill them?” she asks, trying not to scream.

“If it’s a normal Sentinel, you can short it out through a panel in the head.”

“ _If?_ _”_

“Well, Charles probably wouldn’t let it kill his students,” Magneto says. “But it might have identified us, so the question is, how angry with me was Charles when he programmed it?”

There’s a crash, and Ashe holds onto _he wouldn_ _’t let it kill his students._ But they aren’t his students. “Well, when did he do it?”

“Sometime after Mystique used Cerebro to poison him so that we could kidnap... one of his students.”

What the fuck what the _fuck._ “So, pretty mad?”

“I imagine so.”

Great. Lovely. Deciding to disregard the question of whether child kidnappers deserve to get shot, Ashe peeks around the side of the truck again.

_Okay._

_Deep breath._

She stood in the gym and let them take Ellie.

She’s not going to let a robot shoot Lia. 

“Get me up there.”

“What?”

“They’ll shoot at you. They won’t at me.” She holds up a hand, wiggling her fingers. “Human.”

His mouth hangs open for a second, and then a pipe tears itself free from the truck, one end sharpening to a point. “I might not be able to catch you if you fall,” he warns.

“Figures.” 

She grabs the pipe with both hands, Magneto raises a fist, and Ashe is flying.

There used to be a deep, tree-lined gully behind her cousin’s house. They’d had their parents tie a knotted rope to an overhanging branch, and taken turns swinging out over the drop. Ashe had loved that swoop in her stomach as the ground fell away. She used to pretend she was a swan, flying over the treetops below. It wasn’t until she was older that she realized they’d only been low shrubs.

Factoring out the pain in her arm, the killer robot and the lack of anything to sit on, this is almost the same feeling.

From here, Ashe can see the full lay of the room. Can see Crown running back and forth between the shed and the car that Lia is crouching behind. Lia’s holding a board from the shack as though that’s going to be a good weapon. The Sentinel’s feet have been twined together, but it’s doing a little hop towards her—

“A little higher!” Ashe hollers, hoping Magneto can hear her. He must, because she goes up a few more inches, and then, _there_ — she wraps her legs around what passes for the robot’s neck.

Telling herself that this is no different from a rope swing, Ashe slaps her hands over its eye cameras, more to hold on than out of strategy.

It doesn’t even seem to register her presence at all, instead shooting at the place Crown had just been. Careful not to drop the pipe, Ashe wedges the sharp end in the crack between the plates of its plastic skin.

“This thing seems to hate me in particular!” Crown hollers, tossing debris. “Bad robot! Bad robot! Go bother Magneto instead!”

Lia throws the board at its feet, but all it does is make the Sentinel hop faster, nearing knocking Ashe off its head. Maybe she made it mad. If robots can be mad. Giving up on finesse, Ashe just bashes the seam on the back of its head as hard as she can, trying not to wince as it pulls on the burn in her shoulder, and trying to ignore her growing headache. _Bad robot,_ she thinks, trying to channel Mrs. Crown.

The plastic cracks. 

She manages to jab the sharp end in the crack and twist, forcing it apart, and— _yes!_ — there’s mass of circuits and wires. It’s finally realized that perhaps this human isn’t to be protected and reaches the gun arm towards its head. An entire engine slams into the arm before it can reach Ashe, and the Sentinel follows Crown’s advice: something _whirrs_ , and without moving its feet, the robot does a one-eighty turn to face Magneto.

 _Don_ _’t tense,_ Ashe tells herself. Then— _is this gonna electrocute me?_ But, nothing for it— she jabs the pipe as hard as she can into the wiring.

One of the arms goes down, and she jabs again, and again, and it’s going to serve Charles Xavier right if they break his fucking murder robot because it was going after her friend and it deserves to die, _goddammit—_

The Sentinel starts to lean forwards, legs twitching.

Ashe thinks of Legolas rolling off of the Olephant, but she’s not Legolas, so she holds on and closes her eyes and hopes she doesn’t break anything because that sounds painful and she wants to be able to go ice skating this winter—

And then she’s hanging in the air by her zippers and belt loop, and Magneto is on the ground, hand held out.

 _Thought you weren_ _’t going to catch me,_ she almost says, but thinks better of it. Instead she just wheezes as he lowers her to the floor.

“Shit.” Mrs. Crown stumbles towards them, holding her side, and Lia is running past her, moving fast enough that Ashe knows she’s okay.

“Are you alright?” Lia asks, patting Ashe’s forehead and arm, which must be giving off massive pain signals. “Ashe, are you—”

Ashe catches her hand. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure— you’ve got—”

“Headache.”

“You could still—”

“Let’s all check each other for injuries later,” Mrs. Crown says.

Lia frowns. “Any one of us could be bleeding out and not know it. Girl Scouts First Aid 101—”

“But if we stay, this room might reboot and I don’t want to do this again.” Crown pats Magneto clumsily on the arm. “We’ve still got it, old man.”

He cracks a smile. “You’ve spent too much time around teenagers.”

“And you’ve spent too much time around the X-Men.”

 _“Simulation ended,_ ” the voice says, and the house and broken cars and tree sink back into the floor.

“Come on.” Lia hauls Ashe to her feet, and even though Ashe is pretty sure she could have stood up herself, it’s nice to have the help. She just defeated a killer robot, after all. So she leans on Lia, and tries to remember that this Lia is the only one that’s real.

Once they’re back in the hall, the door to the Danger Room closes, as if nothing had happened.

All is quiet.

 _Too quiet,_ Ashe would say, if she were feeling dramatic. And she is. She almost got killed by a robot, she’s got the right.

“ _Don_ _’t_ touch anything, Erik,” Crown says, changing until Charles Xavier is standing in front of them. She walks slowly to the round door, hand on her sides.

“He should have put in a password,” Magneto says.

“Yeah, but it’s Charles.” Her voice is derisive enough that Ashe wonders, not for the first time, why she’s here. Why she’s helping. If there’s love lost there, it doesn’t seem to be much.

Should they have brought her?

But if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be able to get inside the room they apparently need.

A robotic voice says “ _Welcome, Professor,_ ” and the doors open. Four doors, in fact, triangular and pointed towards the middle of a circular door like pizza slices. They make an X shape as they separate.

Cute.

Inside the room is… not cute.

It’s that huge bowl of a room, like the one they saw in the elevator, and it’s crowded. Ashe had thought maybe the silence in the hall meant that Charles had calmed the fuck down, but apparently he had not: A SWAT team runs on air around the perimeter, a pajama-clad Ororo floats near the top, Jean Grey is screaming, a dwarf— no, a _man with dwarfism—_ is shot in the head and falls, over and over and over, the younger Erik leans against a bookshelf that isn’t there and says “live a little—”

When Crown enters, it shifts. They’re on the floor of a truck, while a giant Magneto stands above them— they’re in a lab, and there are needles, and it’s red hot and painful—

They’re on a beach, the sky directly in front of them as though they’re all lying on their backs—

“Imagine a wall,” Magneto says. “You can try and shut him out, at least out of your thoughts—”

Ashe does to the best of her ability— brick wall, stone wall, the walls of this very house— but Lia walks forward. “It’s okay,” she says, and her voice sounds very distant. “I can see.”

“Lia?”

“He can’t trick me with fake people,” Lia says. “Stay there, I’m just gonna—” she disappears into the crowd.

Getting into this room was the plan. Ashe thought maybe they’d find a body, bring him to a hospital, make him wake up, somehow— she hadn’t really thought through it that far. But if there _is_ a body, maybe there’s some residual emotion left on it. Lia will find it.

And then—

Everything is gone.

They’re on the walkway, and it’s empty but for the four of them. The room is dark and cold, and Lia stands alone near an empty chair.

Ashe’s headache is gone.

“Lia?” she asks, uncertain. Lia must have done something, but she isn’t moving— ah, yes, she is, turning and taking a couple steps back towards them. 

“Erik?” she says faintly. “Raven?”

And then she collapses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter might take a little longer because it's not entirely written yet-- unless, of course, they stop letting me go to work due to coronavirus and I have all the time in the world to work on it. 
> 
> (Hope you guys are okay. Stay safe out there!)


	14. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles opens his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that being at home, unemployed, with very few constraints on your time, does NOT productive writing make. At least for me. So, apologies for that.

Charles opens his eyes.

He feels like he’s just woken up, but that can’t be right. A few minutes ago the school was under attack— no— he was in all their minds, dreaming, existing in the space between their thoughts with no sense of self— no— he thinks he might still be dreaming, because everything looks _weird,_ there’s something wrong with his eyes—

He doesn’t remember—

But the others remember: figures and a house and screaming, Charles’s memory spread over the house like dirty clothes and being swarmed by nightmares, and Alex dying over and over and Charles turning to dust and that’s right, that’s right—

He’s on the floor. He’s about to ask for his chair, but his legs are fine. Why would he think his legs aren’t fine?

“I’m sorry,” he says, and they look at him and they’re _confused confused confused_ and so is he.

 _I didn_ _’t say that,_ he’s thinking, but he’s not thinking that, because he isn’t alone in here. This isn’t his body. _I can tell what they_ _’re thinking why can I tell what they’re thinking—_

He’s not Charles Xavier. He’s Lia Sidner, age fourteen, mutant, yes, that’s what’s why everyone looks weird, why there's a faint shimmer around them, he’s come and taken over her brain like he swore he’d never do but now that he’s here he’s not sure how he did it or where else he could possibly _go_.

“Lia?” that’s Ashe, human, best friend in the world, she’s thinking _What_ _’s wrong with Lia she looks weird why is she looking weird this whole place is weird is there something wrong._

“Terribly sorry.” Charles’s hand— Lia’s hand— goes automatically to his temple. “I seem to have— I think I— one moment, if you please—”

Erik is a tangle of _hand-forehead-terribly-sorry-that_ _’s—_ “Charles?” _No stupid but what if—_

“Yes,” he says, and something’s spreading from Erik, some aura this brain is identifying as _joy,_ so strong it almost obscures Erik’s face, and Ashe is _fear-horror_ even as she thinks _what does that mean what does that mean—_ “Can everyone just, not think for a moment, please?”

 _(Telepath oh god can he hear my thoughts is Lia in there can_ she _hear my thoughts oh god oh shit think about uh, feet, no, shit what if she_ _’s not there what if she’s dead how the fuck are you going to live your life if she’s suddenly an eighty year old man what are you going to tell her parents that’s not fair what the fuck—)_

_(Charles when I told you that were acting like a little girl I didn_ _’t mean it literally is she in there too does she get your memories oh dear that’s unfortunate and probably traumatizing oh well I was traumatized when I was a child I turned out fine all things considered—)_

_(Taking over minds again he can_ _’t just_ do _that if it comes down to one or the other I_ _’m choosing Sidner because she doesn’t deserve to be stuck with your bullshit Charles yes I know you can hear me—)_

_(I can hear them is this how you live this is insane don’t_ _read Ashe’s mind I want to know I don’t want to know can I move my hand I can move my hand okay I can still do things memories do I have memories I remember Nixon I wasn’t alive during Nixon oh wow you did a lot of drugs sorry shouldn’t pry does that mean you can see my life too oh shit don’t think about porn shit porn think about the robot why the fuck did you have a robot in your school—)_

“The robot was for practice,” he says aloud, because that’s a thought he can deal with. “Lia’s here, she’s fine, we’re just— sharing— for the moment, while I, oh, dear, it’s 2018, the president is— oh dear lord, I see.” Purifiers, Harry Potter sequels, a girl crying in a gym, a house—

What _happened?_

Lia remembers that Charles was gone. She doesn’t know why.

“Can Lia hear us?” Ashe asks. _(Can you hear her thoughts can she hear Charles_ _’s thoughts does she now have the memory of every time Charles had sex gross gross I wonder no don’t bad BAD I want Lia back—)_

Charles turns away from her mind as best he can and looks towards Erik. Erik, who is still staring at him with some level of wonder. If anyone is going to tell him what happened to his students, to his X-Men, because it’s been _ten years,_ how could it have been ten years— he sends the request as gently as he can, but Erik still flinches. _Lost your touch a bit,_ Erik thinks, but he opens his mind anyway. Shows him Logan saying _did you feel that,_ his students in an old Brotherhood hideout— Kitty pickpocketing locals— spreading out when they realized nobody was looking for them— smuggling mutant children out of rehab centers— then towards Mexico and Canada— Storm leaving for Egypt and then coming back briefly before going to California— a jumble of political faces and campaign slogans— and then a phone call from the parents of one of the few students to return home—

 _We looked for you,_ Erik thinks, sending an impression of satellite-imagery-some-aimless-driving-around-the-Northeast _— but there was only so much we could do—_

 _Wait a second._ Charles’s mind catches on a passing thought. Erik and Mystique only came to the house in the first place so they could steal his _airplane?_ And they were both planning on how to fight the other for it?

 _Only when I answered the call, not after I found out you were alive._ Erik is probably trying to be reassuring. _Wait— she told me she was specifically_ not _after the airplane._

She had said that. He catches the memory of a recent conversation in which they’d both omitted quite a bit.

“Charles,” Mystique snaps.

Right. Ashe had asked him a question. The Blackbird is not important right now.

Lia answers. “I can hear you. There’s two people in my head, but also everyone is in my head. It’s loud.”

 _Can he go in someone_ else’s _head?_ Ashe is wondering, and yes, Charles should— should try—

“I don’t know how,” he says. “I don’t know how to not exist—” he was everyone and then he was one person, the only mind who wasn’t actively shielding against him, who had—

_Did you invite me?_

Lia remembers the moment— _panic rush thinking and wanting to know what and why and reaching for an answer—_ and somehow he’d reached back.

She’s digging deep into his mind, thinking _1970s,_ and looking at the world thinking _the movies don_ _’t look like that—_ there’s the sixties, that’s, oh, that’s what they mean when they talk about the missile crisis, wow he broke into the Oval Office in the early oughts, conspiracy theorists would have a _fit_ — and mutants, mutants with powers she’d dreamed about and ones that would have never occurred to her— portals through space, fire and thoughts and flight, an understanding of science and classics she’d never learned— oh, look, he knows Polish, maybe she knows Polish now—

And then those worlds slam shut.

 _Are you quite done?_ Charles thinks pointedly, and she cringes away in shame, but wait, this is _her_ brain, and how did he do that? Just shut her out? Because that’s useful, isn’t it— but he’d spent years learning to shut people out, and he’s going to have to relearn that, some of that, because this isn’t really his mind.

“What do we do?” she asks. Will they eventually become the same person? How long can you share a head and stay separate? There’s only one brain in there, after all. At some point will their separate memories blur together until she becomes a high school student who can remember the end of the second world war?

_Let_ _’s not find out._

It occurs to Charles that he could take this as a second lease on life, and run with it, but— he wants to be himself. He wants to be somewhere where he can call his friends and family and tell them he’s back, ask how they are, what’s going on. He wants a cup of tea, and Lia hates tea.

Ashe’s brain is one constant screech, and Lia tries not to wonder what she’s hiding. “Well we can’t just sit around here forever,” she says. “Brook’s going to call our parents eventually.”

“Charles could convince them that they were home the whole time.”

Ashe glares at Erik. Her fear and confusion are leaking out of her coat pockets, but now Lia can also see that Ashe has gotten into the habit of hiding her hands when she’s feeling something she doesn’t want Lia to see, and— and there’s something off in her mind— Charles is caught on it, the sign of his own mental fingerprint— 

Before he—

He hides his face in Lia’s hands.

Ten years.

“Charles?” Erik asks.

“I don’t think he should be in anyone’s minds,” Lia says. “He’s not—” her mouth changes around an unfamiliar accent. “I’m fine.” He wants to talk to Erik, he wants to see where Mystique has been, and he doesn’t want Lia to be there for any of it. Which is, fine, Lia’s not sure she wants to be there: but does she not want to be there or is she just picking up on how much _Charles_ doesn’t want her there?

“There’s no point staying here,” Mystique says, all worry and _at least he_ _’s not making us hallucinate anymore_ and _how long can they be two people_ and suddenly Lia is seeing her as the little girl in the kitchen, a teenager, and then older, naked and lethal on Liberty Island in the different color tones of someone else’s mind, and she wants to press a hand over her eyes but that won’t stop her from _seeing it_.

She just wants to be at home. In her room. With nobody around.

“Agreed,” Charles says. _You_ _’re going to have to walk, I’ve been paralyzed for sixty years and I’m not sure I—_

Right.

Lia thinks he’s having her on, because he can see her mind, too, he can see every step she remembers and what’s hidden under her bed and every ugly thought she’s never had and she tries to focus on her feet, her sneakers, slightly old, she needs new ones, and putting one foot in front of the other.

* * *

The house is—

His _house,_ his lovely house. He’d cared for it even when he hated it, closing it properly before leaving for Oxford, filled it with love and hope and safety, and now it’s peeling and molding and the paintings are all damaged— Lia had never noticed that— the temperature and humidity control is long gone and it’s going to take so much money to fix it up again. He is definitely going to need to repaint, and some of this wood paneling is going to have to be professionally restored or just replaced.

The floor he will have to take out entirely, because it’s so thick with fear he can't even see the damage.

“The house has seen worse,” Erik reminds him when he picks at some paint with Lia’s fingernail. “It has literally been blown up.”

He sees that in Lia’s memory, which is pulled from Hank’s memory. Filtered back like so many mirrors.

“The whole house blew up?” Lia repeats, looking wide-eyed to Ashe. She sees it before she’s formed the thought, from the hummingbird buzz of Pietro’s thoughts.

“We put it through a lot,” Charles acknowledges, and Ashe’s mind skips off of it, thinking _that_ _’s creepy that’s weird how is this possible_ is _this possible Lia are you— no—_

And why has it been empty for so long? Why didn’t they at least close it down, cover the furniture—

But the answer is there, in the hastily translated conversation Lia had overheard, and a concerned parent, and Mystique’s quiet rage and the scars on Asheleigh’s mind—

He did that.

They came, they came and Charles hurried to Cerebro and he stretched himself over the world, over every mind he’d ever met, and a body held together by tenuous mental energy had shattered. 

It hadn’t hurt, when Jean— Jean, little Jean, one of his first students— tore him apart. He’d been so mentally gone at that point, still fighting her in her mind, that he’d barely noticed what had happened until he saw Erik and Logan’s faces at the last second.

But this time—

He’d felt it. He’d felt himself coming apart, and now Lia is feeling it too, her horror bounced back to him and he stumbles because he doesn’t know how to use legs, anymore, and Lia doesn’t know what to do because she’s never had a panic attack, not like this, she’s never felt her body fall shatter completely and all she can do is watch it happen and she tries to hide her face but there’s nothing to hide it from because her mind feels like its tearing itself in two.

* * *

Lia collapses.

Charles collapses?

Her hands are on her face and she’s making what sounds like a muffled scream, and Ashe doesn’t know if she should touch her or not touch her but the two older mutants have frozen and she _doesn_ _’t know what to do._

“Lia!” she grabs her friend’s elbow, long since forgetting not to think. “Lia, hey—”

“I’m sorry.”

Ashe can’t tell if it’s Lia or Charles who says it. “It’s okay, what’s wrong, what are you—”

Lia shakes her head, and then Magneto is there at her other side. He looks at Ashe, and she realizes that he’s as frightened as she is.

It’s not comforting.

But he takes Lia’s other elbow, and they help her to her feet. As though she’s an old man and not a perfectly healthy teenager. “I remember,” Charles is saying, muffled by Lia’s hands. “I remember, I’m so sorry, I’m not sure I meant to— I’m sorry, Asheleigh—”

 _Sorry about what?_ “It’s okay.” Whatever it is, they’ll figure it out later. “It’s okay. Let’s just keep walking.” It feels almost as far to the door as it did when the room was full of screaming ghosts, when every bit of fallen paint or ceiling tile might set Charles off on another panic. But they make it, Mrs. Crown leaning on the door to hold it open, and Charles Xavier steps outside for the first time in ten years.

Because that’s who’s walking. It’s clear from how Lia’s face turns to the sky, how her feet are unsteady in the grass.

It’s horrifying.

 _I_ _’m sorry,_ Ashe tries to think, _no offense,_ but it’s horrifying all the same.

“I’m right here,” Lia says. “It’s… it’s alright.” She squeezes Ashe’s hand, and Ashe squeezes it back, and tries and fails not to think about anything in particular. One step down the driveway. Two steps, three steps, four. Through the gate. Across the street. Back to Mrs. Crown’s house, with Brook waiting inside, that they only left— what time is it— Ashe reaches for her phone, and then remembers she doesn’t have it.

It’s dark out, but that just puts the hour at ‘any time after 4:30.’

She hasn’t been here in the dark since Halloween.

Part of her thinks she should be comparing now to then, but there’s too much. _Today_ has been too much; they started it driving to the Guptas, and now there’s Magneto and Mystique and killer robots and Charles _in Lia_ _’s brain._ She still hurts from the fight and it’ll probably be worse tomorrow, but at least tomorrow is Sunday, so she can…

It occurs to her that she still has homework to do for Mrs. Crown’s class, and she starts to giggle.

They all stop at the foot of the steps.

“Wh—” Lia starts to ask, then, “ _oh,_ _”_ and her lips twitch as well. Lia smiling should be good, but the reminder that she’s in Ashe’s head makes her want to run away as fast as she can, and, shit, Lia picked up _that_ thought too—

 _I_ _’m sorry,_ Ashe thinks again, _you know I don_ _’t mean it I can’t control what I think—_

“I’m gonna just walk home from here,” Lia says, shrugging off both Ashe and Magneto. She sways for just a second before she appears to get her feet under control. “I need to be away from… brains.”

Ashe is afraid of standing next to her, but she’s more afraid of Lia being out of sight. “I didn’t—”

“We know.” Charles’s accent pulls Lia’s mouth in the wrong direction. “But we’ll appreciate the quiet.” Maybe Ashe is imagining it, but it looks like Lia’s about to literally fall apart at the seams. Can that happen? It must, it happened to Charles— he faded away right in front of Magneto’s eyes, and she shouldn’t think about it because Charles is right there, but it turns out it’s _really hard not to think._

Hard not to think about Charles taking over Lia’s brain entirely and running away.

Mrs. Crown wouldn’t let him, would she? But she’s been undercover the entire time, who knows what she would do? Today Ashe saw her fight a robot.

Lia’s gait is uneven. Staggering. She looks almost drunk, and if her parents see— but that’s something she’ll be able to deal with. Right now, Ashe has to deal with the fact that it’s just her and two very powerful mutants. Being afraid of them is almost background noise, by now.

“Right,” Mrs. Crown says, and marches up the steps to her house.

Ashe and Magneto stay on the street for a moment, both watching Lia and Charles disappear into the darkness. Then he clears his throat, turns with a weird arm gesture, and marches up the stairs.

Brook is still at the kitchen table where they left her, thankfully not smelling of piss. She’s been crying, though, and keeps rubbing the back of her eyes with her hand.

“Ashe!”

She flings herself at her sister before she can remember how embarrassing it is, and if she hugs her too long she’s definitely going to start crying and once she starts she’s never going to stop. So Ashe takes a deep breath before letting her go.

“We had to fight a giant robot and now Charles Xavier has taken over Lia’s head,” she blurts.

_“What?”_

“Technically they’re sharing a head.” Magneto is rummaging through Crown’s freezer, but his posture is anything but casual.

At least Brook looks horrified. “How does— how does that— how do you get him _out?_ _”_

Magneto pulls out a tiny boxed meat pie. “That’s the question. How do we get him out, and where does he go?”

Ashe thinks he should go to Magneto’s head. It seems only fair. They’re in love, or whatever. Or maybe that makes it _worse?_ Ashe doesn’t like Lia being able to read her thoughts, but her feelings aren't, like, mutual. It might be different if it was mutual.

Or whatever.

“We’ll figure that out,” Mrs. Crown says. “Yes, please, Magneto, do help yourself to my food.” He pauses, box halfway in the microwave. “At least put one in for me, too. Asheleigh and… uh… you two should probably just go home.”

Home sounds amazing. Walls and bed and no robots and food and parents who can’t read her mind, but if they leave, then what if there’s no one there to remind them that Lia is important? “What happens if you don’t find a way to get him out of there?”

“We will,” Magneto says.

“How?”

He doesn’t answer. Asshole. They killed a robot together. Does that mean nothing these days?

“Lia will know what’s going on, I’m sure she’ll tell you, and I’ll see you on Monday regardless.”

Right. Monday. Class. School.

“Can Lia and I skip your homework?” Ashe asks, before she can think better of it.

“I’ll consider it. Go.”

“One moment.”

Ashe and Brook have already turned towards the door when Magneto speaks, and Ashe hesitates to turn back around. Her eyes catch on a doily, and for a moment, she imagines unraveling it and strangling him with the string. _“What?”_

“I don’t think I need to tell you that telepaths are considered high level, highly dangerous mutants.”

He doesn’t. He really did not need to do that. “Yeah?”

“And in the eyes of the law, society, and Sentinel Services, Lia is currently one of the most powerful telepaths in the world. If you tell _any_ one about the current situation, your best-case scenario, she disappears.”

 _“Thank_ you. Jesus Christ.” _We_ _’re in the same boat here, fuckwad,_ Ashe thinks, but she doesn’t have the guts to say it. Instead she grabs Brook’s hand and tugs her out the front door.

“Robots?” is the first thing her sister says when they reach the car. “Telepaths— possession— are you—”

Angling her shoulder so Brook can see the tears in her coat, Ashe starts to tell her the whole story. But somewhere between her brain and her mouth, the last few hours punch her in the face, and she starts crying instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope all of you are staying safe, keeping sane, and breathing carefully. I've been curating some great memes about the current fiasco on [Tumblr,](https://runawaymarbles.tumblr.com/tagged/covid-19) if anyone wants some quality meme time.


	15. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sorry,_ Charles thinks. _One of the downsides of telepathy. It’s not the worst, you get used to it pretty quickly._  
>  Lia will definitely not get used to it quickly.

She loses her nerve on the driveway, where this morning’s excited footprints are cast into sharp relief by the small lights that dot the path.

 _How bad is this going to be?_ It’s easier to pretend she’s asking a question. To frame this as a conversation, and not consciousnesses wrestling over the ability to think.

Although Sharon Xavier had never known exactly _how,_ she’d known Charles was different. Odd. He’d known of every bottle she ever hid, every pregnancy scare she’d ever had, afraid a second child would be just as awful as the first. Every time she thought about how much she loved him, and all the times she didn’t.

But he’s seen enough to know that every parent wasn’t like Sharon.

For better, for worse.

He’s also seen enough to know that you can’t unlearn what someone thinks of you.

 _Ignore them as best you can and go to your room,_ he advises. The less contact, the better.

“Alright,” Lia says aloud.

With as much trepidation as she’d approached the Guptas’ earlier in the day, she walks towards her own house. One of the most familiar sights in the world, yet entirely new through Charles’s eyes.

Her dad is in the living room, paging through James Patterson’s latest, and he glances up when she opens the door— there’s interest under his fingers, his mind a mix of inane plot points and _didn_ _’t hear the Grants’ car, not carrying any shopping bags, nothing to buy in the entire state of Connecticut, might not mean anything, could have at least been home in time to light the candles with Sarah, why does she look like she’s about to cry?_

“Hey, kiddo.” _See nice and casual, maybe make that an invitation,_ “What’s up?” _Because something is obviously up, I hope she and Ashe didn_ _’t fight again._

“Hi,” Lia manages. She fixes her eyes on the stairs and walks towards it. She thinks she and Charles had sorted out the leg issue on the way home, but he’s getting anxious again, trying to move, and that doesn’t help.

 _Didn_ _’t work, should I try asking more directly? But that’s more likely to make her upset. Goddammit. I should call Ruth, see if she has any advice on Teenage Girls._ Her dad looks back to his book, where a character description makes him think of a girlfriend he had in college, and— oh, _shit._ Lia runs up the stairs, which has the double benefit of making him think about her problems instead of reminiscing, and getting her the fuck out of there.

 _Sorry,_ Charles thinks. _One of the downsides of telepathy. It_ _’s not the worst, you get used to it pretty quickly._

Lia will definitely not get used to it quickly. Or at all. _What_ _’s the worst, then?!_

The worst is a blur of _something_ before Charles is focusing hard on the walls, counting every bump in the paint. The worst is other peoples’ traumas, or what they’ve inflicted on others. The worst is shaking a man’s hand, seeing his memory of assaulting a child, and having to keep smiling instead of throwing up. The worst is looking at someone, knowing the worst thing that ever happened to them, and carrying it in secret, because they never told him, and he doesn’t have the right to know.

The worst thing is when that all becomes background noise. Cost of going outside. Cost of living.

And the last thing Lia needs right now is to shoulder all the world’s traumas, so he tries to focus on anything else. Is Erik calling Storm and Logan? Charles doesn’t have their current phone numbers. Charles also shouldn’t call them at all, because he knows how he’d react if someone called and claimed to be Jean: it’ll be a lot easier to have Erik do it on his behalf.

Because they listen to Erik, now. And what’s more miraculous is that Erik listens to _them._

He’s not sure that stranger things _have_ happened.

There’s always been a warmth to Erik, no matter how many pains the man took to hide it away. Jean had seen that, for a while. The others never had, and while Charles couldn’t _blame_ them for it— certainly, Erik had gone to a lot of trouble to be the biggest tit he could possibly manage— it had been. Well. It had been frustrating that nobody, up to and including Erik himself, seemed to appreciate it.

But Lia had seen it, hadn’t she? He shouldn’t be surprised at how much Lia has taken to Erik, even as she tries to pretend she hasn’t. He’s a mutant, and queer, and Jewish, and around her grandmother’s age. He— even the imagined version of him Charles’s subconsciousness had cooked up— had given her answers when she’d been desperately looking for them. And that might be worrisome, because while he’s fairly sure that Erik isn’t on the path to genocide anymore, the last time he’d let a young woman get close to him, Charles had gotten shot in the back.

 _You can_ _’t have it both ways,_ Lia thinks, irritated. _Either he_ _’s an ally, or he isn’t._

But that’s never been true. Fifty years of memories flash by in the space of a blink, and Lia sits down. There’s a question in her thoughts that she’s too embarrassed to ask, but has already done so by virtue of their sharing a head.

Charles doesn’t think _yes, I love him,_ because he’s spent so many years training himself not to. But she can see that just as well.

He blames the fact that his consciousness is being interrupted by teenage hormones for all his feelings on the subject.

_My uncle and his first wife argued a lot and now they_ _’re divorced. I don’t understand how you could love him while fighting him for decades._

Of course she can’t. He’s known Erik more than three times as long as she’s been alive. Four, if you count the last decade, which he doesn’t, because he is not in a place to deal with that just yet.

It’s easy to do because they were never really together. They never had to make compromises for each other, because that was taken off the table almost immediately.

Love doesn’t always conquer all.

But he doesn’t need to think about this right now. He needs to be alone in his head before he can do that, safe from teenage hormones and illusions of how the world works.

 _Rude,_ Lia thinks pointedly.

She thinks she’s handling things rather well, all things considered, but she’s not quite prepared for what to do when her father knocks on her bedroom door.

Lia’s about to yell at him until he goes away, all the concern at the forefront of his mind be damned, but Charles closes her mouth before she can. _Talk to him,_ he thinks.

That’s a terrible idea. He’ll flip out. He’ll have her carted away to the nuthouse. He’ll, at the very least, be mad. Charles won’t understand that, because Charles’s own father died when he was very young, but—

Oh.

“Yeah,” she says aloud.

He hesitates on the doorway, thinking, _wait here, her space, her space—_ “You can come in,” Lia says pointedly.

 _She_ _’s not crying— good or bad? — locked herself in after saying she was going shopping when she clearly wasn’t. Is Sarah right, has she been secretly dating? Maybe they broke up, that would explain the hiding. I’ll call Connie and see if she was with Ashe. Oh,_ shit, _what if she was dating Ashe and they broke up? That_ _’d be a nightmare._

His thoughts are so much more orderly than Mystique’s jumble or Ashe’s erratic shrieks. It would almost be soothing, if he wasn’t speculating on her love life.

“Are you doing okay?” _That_ _’s a bad question then she’s just going to say ‘yes’ and shut you down._

And _yeah, why_ is the answer on the tip of Lia’s tongue, but she hesitates. Manages a shrug instead, scooting over on the floor in invitation.

He sits down next to her, leaving a neat trail of concerned footprints across the floor. They’re just slightly different from worry, and now she can double check it against his mind: she’s going to be so much better at this, once Charles is gone.

If Charles can leave.

He was able to jump from head to head last time he died, but he’d been fully aware of what he was doing at the time. He hadn’t buried himself in someone’s brain as a semi-conscious survival technique, and while he feels _bad_ about doing it, he’s not certain he is entirely to blame for the situation. Even if it is, technically, his _fault._

But he left his students, his X-Men— his _family—_ on their own for ten years, without even money to support them. Bobby, Rogue and Kitty will be proper adults now, his students are going to be scattered and without help, and Erik was left to fill shoes he never wanted to. 

When Lia presses her thumbs onto her knees, she can see Charles’s guilt mixed in with her own apprehension in the print.

“Whatever happened, it’ll be okay,” her dad says, still contemplating the possibility that Lia and Ashe have had a huge romantic falling out and are never going to be able to speak again.

Somehow, the current situation seems less devastating than that would be. Erik must have a plan, or at least know where to start forming a plan, because he would have been a lot more worried and dramatic if he hadn’t. This will be fine.

“You know you can tell me anything,” he adds carefully, trying not to overdo it.

Lia doesn’t trust herself to do more than nod. “I know.” Then, unable to face his disappointment— “Soon. I just. Can’t right now.”

 _That_ _’s better than ‘gross dad you’re embarrassing me.’ Maybe Sarah should try. Lia might be more willing to tell her about romantic woes._ He then proceeds to remember his own first relationship in alarming and embarrassing detail: and half in German. Charles’s powers don’t usually broadcast on all systems like this, if he’s not trying— he’ll pick up stray thoughts, but he’s only ever gotten images if he’s looking for them, and only tuned into someone’s stream of consciousness intentionally.

This is probably a fascinating byproduct of reaching in all directions for so many years. If only this had happened to someone else, so they could compare.

As it is, Charles tries to rebuild his defenses from scratch. 

* * *

She skips the candle lighting. And also dinner.

It's not a big deal. She'll be there on Monday. She'll have figured out how to be in a room with them by Monday.

Sitting next to her father in silence is tentatively alright, as long as he’s thinking about her and nothing _weird,_ but she’s not sure she’s going to be able to carry on a conversation without answering a thought instead of a verbalized question, like Charles had been prone to doing his entire childhood.

He’d gotten into the habit of quickly erasing the moment from the other person’s mind, and it wasn’t until later that he wondered if frequent memory wipes contributed to his mother’s failing mental health. But remembering Charles’s childhood, and comparing it to her own, Lia comes to the conclusion that there’s a good chance Sharon was just Like That.

But it’s not something she wants to test.

 _How do you function like this?_ Charles wonders, shoving Lia’s Polish homework away from them. He _speaks_ Polish, for God’s sake, and he can’t make heads or tails of this, because he can’t actually read it.

 _Not very well,_ Lia thinks back, mind a jumble of obscured test questions and asking her phone to read her texts aloud. She flashes back to Erik talking about windows, and yes, Erik, the _theory_ is perfectly sound, but doing it is proving a lot more difficult. Maybe it would be easier if Charles wasn’t there, making her question her every thought. Or maybe it’d be harder, because he learned to do something similar, right? But for him, tuning out thoughts was like learning to ignore the traffic on the street. She has to learn to see through distortion. 

_No one learns to control their powers all at once,_ he thinks in his most teacher-y tone.

Unfortunately, Lia can remember every mutant he ever met who could, in fact, do that. Mystique, for starters. Sean. Angel. Erik’s old friend, whatshisfuck— Mortimer. Couldn’t hide his mutation, but he could control it.

_Sorry. In my defense, I_ _’m much better at being comforting when I am capable of lying._

It’s not fair. She has one of the most powerful mutants known to history living in her head, and she still _can_ _’t fucking read._ In retrospect, it was childish to think that finding Charles Xavier would solve any of her problems, because he is one man with problems of his own— a missing family, everything he built in ruins, an absolute political _nightmare_ that he is going to have to deal with, Erik and Mystique up to whatever they’re up to, and he’s _sharing a head with a fourteen year old girl because he doesn_ _’t have a fucking body._

They fling themself back onto the bed in a fit of pique, glowering at the ceiling.

They should skip school on Monday— Lia’s parents won’t believe she’s sick again, but they know something is up so maybe they’ll let her. But— no, Mystique is there, and she might have updates from Erik, since they can’t call him, and Ashe is at school and Lia really wants to see her even if the thought of Ashe’s mental screeching makes her a little nauseous.

So Ashe is gay. That’s somehow a surprise, but not, like, a shock. Lia might have figured it out herself if she’d ever considered it, but she hadn’t. She always sort of assumed they’d both become interested in boys when they were sixteen, because that just seemed like the age that that happens: sure, friends in elementary and middle school had talked about crushes, but what they’d described feeling for boys was just what Lia felt like when she really wanted one of the girls to be her friend. So it was probably just them not understanding that they could be friends with boys without having crushes. Who _doesn_ _’t_ think their best friend is pretty, or want to hold her hand? The fact that Ashe feels like that towards Lia is just what being best friends _is,_ isn’t it?

Maybe it's not. She scans through Charles’s memories of crushing on boys as an early teenager, and it’s almost dizzying when he yanks back control of the brain. _Please do not include me in this,_ he thinks pointedly. Bad enough to have to feel adolescent hormones again, but he can _not_ handle adolescent romance from an inside perspective. Questions about one’s sexuality should be answered the traditional way: by ignoring your feelings for years, until you jump off a boat and meet a Nazi hunter who really wants to do things with you that are illegal in forty nine out of fifty states.

For a man who is presented as like, the Yoda of mutants, Lia thinks he’s a little bit messed up.

 _Yoda dealt with his loss of political power by living in a swamp for twenty years and then promptly dying,_ Charles reminds her. _So that might be fairly accurate_ _._ Yoda had also lost his physical body by the end, hadn't he?

Charles tried to read _Moby Dick,_ once, because it seemed like the type of thing any pretentious Oxford-educated boy should have read. The book was relegated to the shelf after the first third— something that Erik had teased him about relentlessly— but there had been a line that stuck with him, decades later: _Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance_ _… methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me._

He’d thought that particularly profound, at the time. Enough that he had come back to it once he was paralyzed: _I am a magnificent consciousness, that is greater than the body I_ _’m trapped in._

It seems laughable, now.

He isn’t sure what he’s afraid of more: losing himself in Lia’s impulses and becoming nothing more than a set of foreign memories, or overwriting Lia’s mind. Effectively killing her, _and_ getting himself stuck as a teenager. Young enough to be his own grandchild, watching all his friends and family die. Not to mention throwing another wrench into his not-relationship: and now Lia is horrified as well, both at the concept of dying, and at Charles’s priorities.

 _I_ _’m sorry!_ he sends. But Lia has been worrying about how she’s going to like, _shower,_ with an old man in her head, so he’s not the only one with fucked up priorities, she supposes. And she’s been more worried about personal drama than anything else.

Charles might not be a great person, but neither is she. He must have noticed by now: he can see every bad thought she’s ever had, and some of them are pretty fucking bad.

 _Bad thoughts don_ _’t make you a bad person,_ Charles says. _You can_ _’t really control what you think._ He’s met thousands of lovely people who have occasionally thought about stabbing someone, dropping a baby, or sleeping with a friend’s partner. Most of them are so horrified that they shoved the thought off into a little corner of their brain, to return to when they wanted a reason to hate themselves. People think ugly thoughts about their children, their parents, their spouses, their best friends: by the time he was thirteen, Charles had learned to separate the people to be worried about from the rest. _It_ _’s your actions and intentions that matter._

If Charles judged everyone based on the worst things they ever thought, he wouldn’t have any hope for humanity. _  
_

Lia’s stomach rumbles, and it occurs to Charles that he hasn’t eaten since dinner in 2008.

 _Yeah, alright._ Lia gets up, still stewing over the _intentions_ bit— Erik has killed a bunch of people, but he was _trying_ to do something good: does that matter? It clearly matters to Charles. It matters to Erik. Is it possible to truly hate anyone, when you can see their mind?

 _If you understand their fear you might start to think it just,_ fake-Erik said. Is that what Charles really thinks, or just what he thought Erik would say?

He can’t explain himself, because he doesn’t remember the conversation. Doesn’t remember any of it: he supposes he must have been sleepwalking, reacting and responding on muscle memory and instinct alone. He can’t explain Erik, or Jean, or why he pulled Hanna out of Lia’s memory, made her walk and talk and remember—

_Going to gain so much weight if I eat that pie eh fuck it who cares I_ _’ll start exercising more later God this is always good should save some for Lia? But she didn’t come to dinner, that’s her fault, she used to love lighting the Hanukkah candles, but, teenagers, what can you do—_

Lia freezes in the kitchen doorway, and her mom slowly puts down the rest of the pie.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Charles says back, while Lia looks at the _guilt-satisfaction_ on the table. “Just… getting some food.”

“Are you alright?” her mom asks. “Your voice sounds funny.”

“Yeah.” _Stop talking to people, your American accent sucks._ She grabs a bucket of leftovers from the fridge without looking. “Just… watching a lot of Doctor Who, you know me.”

 _Do I?_ Sarah wonders, and Lia flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we _finally_ conclude the five chapter Saturday. They've had a _day_ , fam. It should be about three more chapters to the end! Hope you're all staying safe and sane.
> 
> Edit: literally nobody asked, but the the one state where sodomy was legal in late 1962 was Illinois.


	16. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s attention on her, now, and that’s worse: vague sympathy from Felicia, who thinks Lia is slow-witted and not at all pretty— relief from Ted, who had the same wrong answer and is glad he wasn’t called on— disappointment from Steve, who thought Lia was smart— and Audrey thinks her t-shirt is funny—
> 
> Shame crawls along Lia’s insides, and settles on her desk. She didn’t want to know any of these things.

She expected Mrs. Crown to be gone, but there she is. First period social studies, standing at the front of the room in her slacks and cardigan that may or may not be made of her own skin. Ashe hadn’t thought about that before, but that’s _weird._ Does it feel like skin, or does it feel like wool?

Is Mrs. Crown technically naked right now?

She’s probably wearing clothes. She’d be cold, otherwise. And if something happened and she lost focus, or whatever, then being naked would just make it worse. Right?

“Asheleigh,” Crown says pointedly, and Ashe realizes that her teacher is holding out her hand for the homework.

Which Ashe still thinks she shouldn’t have had to do.

Though it’s not like she’d had anything better to do, yesterday, aside from panic, which she’d done rather a lot of, and texting Lia, which had been weird because she hadn’t known what Lia said and what Charles Xavier said, so she’d given that up partway through. Lia probably had a _worse_ Sunday, though— she hadn’t said if she was going to be in today.

She kept wanting to go to Mrs. Crown’s house, find Magneto, demand answers— and she kept getting as far as her own front door before chickening out.

When she hands over the homework, Mrs. Crown doesn’t meet her eye.

 _I saved you from a giant killer robot,_ Ashe thinks, but reading minds isn’t Mystique’s power.

* * *

_We_ _’re ready for school,_ Charles thinks. It’s flimsy lid on a jar of doubt.

They are not ready for school.

There’s so much _noise._ The normal hoot and holler of locker doors slamming plus the _homework where— do you think she noticed— last Bachelor episode— Riverdale characters naked— hate my dad— think I_ _’m fat?— but what is the meaning of life, really?—she’s delusional if she thinks she’s getting into Penn— can a just God truly endorse the modern Republican party?— history sucks—_ that buzzes around her. Charles points them away from focusing on any of it, letting it turn into the normal morning cacophony. It’s easier to ignore a hundred minds than just one.

It turns out it’s less easy to ignore twenty minds when you’re all trying to solve the same math problems at slightly different speeds, except Lewis is having a really elaborate sexual fantasy about some characters from _Game of Thrones,_ Marianne is having an elaborate fantasy about three of the guys from _One Direction—_ Jesus _Christ_ her classmates think about sex a lot— at least there’s Amanda who is just writing _Doctor Who_ fanfiction in her head: she’s got a fairly engaging plotline going, actually, and it’s better than Felicia’s anger at her older brother—

“Lia?” her teacher asks pointedly, and Charles grabs the answer from the nearest mind.

“Seventeen point four five?” 

“No, but I can see how you’d get there…”

 _That was Andy!_ Lia wails, remembering four moments of secondhand embarrassment all at once. _Never cheat off of Andy!_

 _I panicked,_ Charles snipes back.

There’s attention on her, now, and that’s _worse:_ vague sympathy from Felicia, who thinks Lia is slow-witted and not at all pretty— relief from Ted, who had the same wrong answer and is glad he wasn’t called on— disappointment from Steve, who thought Lia was smart— and Audrey thinks her t-shirt is funny—

Shame crawls along Lia’s insides, and settles on her desk. She didn’t want to know any of these things. _Should_ she learn to put make-up on? Would that—

 _They_ _’ve already moved on,_ Charles points out. Their attention was a flicker now taken up by whatever happened next, and half of them will have forgotten that they thought of her at all.

Lia’s not going to be able to forget, though.

It’d be easier to be vindictive about the fact that Felicia isn’t pretty _either_ if she couldn’t see just how hard the other girl was trying. God _dammit._ This might be the second-worst thing that’s ever happened to her, and it’s infuriating that Charles is just a little bit amused. _He_ stopped caring what other people thought of him by the time he was ten, unless he was trying to use that to his advantage. Of course, he also had the benefits of being considered good-looking, and having an accent that made people think he was friendly and knew what he was talking about. Asshole.

 _You could also learn to not care what people think,_ he points out. _Or, you could care about what the right people think._ Ashe _thinks you_ _’re pretty._ They remember the fear-created Lia hallucination scowling at Ashe in the parlor, and Lia thinks _SHUT UP_ at Charles as loud as she can.

More powerful people than Lia have tried to get Charles to shut up. Erik had even hit him with a pillow, once, during a debate about something or other: Charles can’t remember the argument, just how he’d told Erik off for assaulting a disabled man. Erik had offered, sarcastically, to kiss it better, and when he’d gotten close enough Charles had licked his nose in retaliation.

He’d been very careful with his thoughts around Jean in the following weeks.

He should be more careful _now,_ but at least his recollections are distracting Lia from the minds of her classmates. And the lesson— but given the scale of things, Charles thinks that that can be forgiven. It’s not as though her grade in freshman math is going to have a huge impact on the rest of her life, regardless of what her parents and teachers tell her. 

_Aren_ _’t you a teacher? Isn’t it like, against the Teacher Code for you to admit that?_

Maybe in the human world. Charles was usually happy of his students are functional and free adults by the time they reach college years. The ability to do pre-calculus and understand Shakespeare was just a bonus.

_But never tell anyone that._

_Are you kidding? This is one of life_ _’s greatest myths, revealed. I should call the news._

_Hilarious._

They survive the panicked minds of passing period and most of English class— the current book is _Romeo and Juliet,_ about which Charles has many Oxford-approved thoughts. They’re in the midst of a mental argument about whether he can share them— _not everyone has access to a higher level of analysis, it will help your classmates— are you fucking kidding they_ _’re going to think I cribbed it from SparkNotes, I’ve never been a prodigy English student— someone having expectations of you can lead to a higher caliber of work in the future—_ when Janice from the office sticks her head in, asking for Lia.

She’s about to panic when she realizes. _Don_ _’t take your backpack,_ Mystique is thinking. _This will only take a second._

Out in the hall, Mystique hands her a folded piece of paper. “Your pass,” she says aloud.

“Thanks.”

She only knows it’s a pass because she can see it in Mystique’s mind; to Lia, it’s just a smudge of anxiety and excitement.

_Blink twice if you_ _’re listening to me._

Lia blinks twice, trying not to scowl.

_Great. You_ _’ve got a meeting with the MRO during third period. Your absence will be excused from gym._

Charles has to take over their powers of speech to keep Lia from shouting. Instead, they limit themselves to raised eyebrows, and what Lia hopes will someday grow into a murderous expression.

 _You go in, you see what you can find out about where they took Ellie McClean. Who his contacts are and how we can get to them. It_ _’s going to be a lot less suspicious than smuggling Charles if— when, when, when, smuggling Charles in_ when _he_ _’s better._ She’s gotten into Bill’s computer before. She thinks she could have gotten a lot farther if they hadn’t been on the look out for a mutant who could change shape— or is that just the excuse she used to take a break? She isn’t sure, anymore, and doesn’t like thinking about it.

 _Report back during lunch,_ Mystique adds pointedly, before shooing Lia back to class.

* * *

MRO Bill’s office looks the same, although there’s a lot less stress on the desk, now that the panic of the Incident has passed. Lia tucks her hands into her armpits, trying not to stare at the boredom on his keyboard.

After all, she’s got his brain now.

He doesn’t want to be at work— he’s thinking about a Yankees game he has tickets to— but he’s wondering why Lia is coming in, since he had her pegged as a bleeding heart wanna-be leftist who is probably reading pro-mutant sympathy blogs spread by socialists. Unless she’s had a change of heart. Seen someone get hurt and realized the right thing to do. Do the Yankees even have a _prayer_ of beating the Red Sox? Best not to speculate. Fucking Boston. Why is this girl not talking yet?

“I had a question,” Lia says slowly, trying to remember her own words and set Charles loose in Bill’s mind at the same time. “I thought, seeing as it’s been a few weeks, we’d have heard from Ellie by now.”

 _Eleanor McClean— why are these kids so worried about someone so dangerous— guess it_ ’ _s all good for them to be worried about her, siting here, safe from any problems she might cause— mutants are damn easy to sympathize with if you aren’t in danger from them— but I’m just doing my damn job here—_

Charles bristles a bit at that, thinking of a beach and a missile.

“I’m sure that she’s very busy where she is,” MRO Bill says. _And maybe she just doesn_ _’t want to get in touch with you: you specifically told me you weren’t friends. Was that just some sort of teen girl thing?_

He’s been trained to at least recognize the signs of telepathic attack, even if he can’t fight them off. Charles isn’t sure he can be trusted to rummage through a brain right now, but they can get Bill's train of thought is on the right track: all they have to do is ask leading questions and watch it go by.

“If you could tell me who you gave her to, maybe I could at least write a letter,” Lia says hopefully. “Let her know we don’t all hate her.”

Hah. Names, faces— an emergency number he had to memorize, which connects to a rep from Sentinel Services— he doesn’t know what happens to the kids after that but he thinks they’re taken to a facility of some sort where they’re collared and given factory jobs of some sort—

“I’m not sure that’s possible. If Ms. McClean wants to contact you, she would do so.”

 _We should dig deeper,_ Lia insists. _There_ _’s got to be something more, something someone told him and then he forgot—_ Bill is looking uncomfortable under Lia’s stare, wondering what the hell she thinks she’s doing. He taps dots of suspicion across his desk. Is there someone she wants to report, but she wants to know what will happen to them? She doesn’t have the look of a mutant herself— Bill likes to think he can spot ‘em, he’s sure he was suspicious of Eleanor McClean before— but that doesn’t mean she’s not covering for someone. Her hostile Asian friend, maybe.

 _If he starts to suspect you have telepathic powers, especially when you don_ _’t anymore, that could be very bad._ At that point, _hopefully,_ Charles will be corporeal and able to help: two minutes with Bill, with his powers at normal level, and Charles could scrape all his knowledge of Sentinel Services out of his head and then convince him his new life goal was to become a tax accountant.

Or a teapot.

“I guess,” Lia says. “You just hear things, you know, about how they treat migrants and the like, I’d be really worried if they just left my classmates in places like that… you know?”

 _How they treat illegal aliens is better than how they were living at home,_ Bill thinks. Then, _do not pick a fight with the child._ He mentally composes a snide text he’s going to send to his old HomeSec buddy Ryan the second she leaves. Something like _someone needs to shut down the leftist meme Facebook pages before my office gets overrun with kids who think they_ _’re Harriet Tubman._ Ryan will get a kick out of that, and Bill has been looking for an excuse to start a conversation with him, anyway. His talks with Ryan can go on for days, but Ryan is never the one to start them, and that is worrisome. Does he not want to be friends anymore? Are people around the Department saying things about him? Because it was all a total misunderstanding.

“She’s just fine,” Bill promises. There’s even annoyance on his _breath:_ Lia can see it for just a second, rippling around his beard. “She’s where it’s safest for her, and safest for the rest of us. That’s my job, you know— keeping all of us safe. Is there anything else you wanted to ask about, or anything you wanted to tell me to help me do that?” _Please just tell me who the mutant is so this whole conversation will be worth it._ He really wants to finish reading the comments on the Red Sox page.

“I guess not.” Lia stands. “Thanks.”

She doesn’t care if he’d have noticed: they should have torn his brain apart. Charles could have wiped the minds of anyone who looked into it later—

 _No I really couldn_ _’t have,_ he points out, not without regret. And then guilt, at that regret, because he doesn’t want to corrupt Lia with his violent tendencies— but _are_ they his? Maybe the desire for revenge is hers— and maybe the concern that they’d start blending into the same person is more urgent than he thought— although Lia thinks she has more to fear on that front. If she going to start wearing cardigans and wanting to have sex with old men?

Her horror— and Charles’s offense at her horror— at the idea is good reassurance that they’re still separate entities.

Thinking of Facebook reminded MRO Bill that he should call his mom, since her dog just died and she’s been feeling poorly, and Lia flees before she can hear anything that might make her _empathetic_.

 _God forbid,_ Charles thinks dryly. Erik had yelled at him for that once— something along the lines of _empathy is what keeps mutant rights from moving forward: people can have empathy for a person whose son was killed by a mutant more easily than they can have empathy for the mutants—_ and Charles had suggested that perhaps mutants should kill fewer sons. It hadn’t gone over well, and he’d been treated to a half hour lecture on how mutants were more likely to be killed by humans than vice versa. Which was a fine thing, because Charles is pretty sure he’d _written_ that lecture.

“Why do you still hang out with him?” Scott had demanded, when Charles recounted the argument.

Charles had looked at Scott, who still had bits of silly string stuck in his hair from a surprise birthday party, and said, “it’s nice having friends my own age.”

The upshot of that, of course, had been that then both Scott _and_ Erik were mad at him. Though Scott should have understood: living where you work is convenient, but it means there’s hardly ever time off. There was no place he could _stop_ being Professor X, and just be Charles Xavier. His closest friends in Salem Center were Jean, Scott and Storm— his former students and current employees. He’d loosened up around them, over the years, but there were some boundaries that could never really be erased.

Though they had all gotten hilariously drunk together one New Year’s: woken up sprawled on the parlor couches, nearly buried in a snow drift, with Jamie Stevens standing over them. His face had looked much more disapproving than his mind would suggest— he’d been smug that Charles no longer had the moral authority to yell at him and his friends for breaking into the liquor cabinet.

 _You know how special it was,_ Ororo had said the night before, _to make snow in Egypt? But I could never make it stick._ And then Jean had started a snowball fight, using telekinesis to target them all at once. Charles had looked around the room, seen nothing he couldn’t live without, and stuffed a big handful down the back of Scott’s shirt.

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to remember this without grief.

* * *

Ashe hesitates at the doorway to Mrs. Crown’s room.

She fought a robot, she should not be afraid of a teacher.

“Just come in,” Mrs. Crown says, not looking up from her papers. “They’ll be along shortly.”

Ashe approaches, trying not to be a baby about it. Mrs. Crown has been her teacher all year: she’s not going to kill Ashe _now._ It’d be suspicious. “Lia wasn’t in gym.”

“Yes, I sent her to a meeting. She’ll be here.”

Normally Ashe and Lia eat at the back of the room, but if Lia’s going to come back to talk to Mrs. Crown, Ashe wants to hear what’s going on. So she puts her backpack down at the seat closest to the teacher's desk, and sits.

“Do you think she— they’re— okay? Have you and M… _ax_ figured out how to fix it?”

When Mrs. Crown lowers her paper, Ashe realizes that she’s been grading their quizzes from last week. One Ashe had taken when she thought her teacher was Victoria Crown, human and boring.

Is it possible for two days to take a lifetime?

“We’re working on it. There are some people coming to help— it just takes them a little longer to travel. They’ll be here soon.” She considers Ashe for a moment. Is she searching her for weaknesses? Blackmail points? “Charles used to hit on women by telling them they were mutants.”

That is… not what Ashe expected her to say.

“What?”

“Back before the two of us even _knew_ there were others like us. He’d say to a woman, _you have blue eyes, that_ _’s this whatever gene thing, that makes you a mutant._ ”

Is she trying to say that Ashe is technically a mutant as well? That doesn’t make sense. Mystique does not like humans. “Did that work for him?”

“Unfortunately. I hated it.” She draws a big slash mark through someone’s answer, and scrawls an F at the top of the page. Ashe hopes it isn’t hers. “He always knew which women would be receptive, see— his mutation gave him advantages. _And_ he could go around in public without any problem. He didn’t understand why a blue, scaly girl might not be as happy about it. I’m not sure he ever did. Mutant rights, to him, meant respect. Being able to talk about his mutation. People not running away screaming, when they heard what he could do. Mutant rights, for me, meant being able to walk down the street.” 

What the _fuck_ is happening. “You, uh, got comfortable with yourself eventually?”

Mrs. Crown— _Mystique,_ Ashe should really start thinking of her as Mystique— finally looks up, eyes glowing gold for a moment. “Not all differences mean the same thing. Or come with the same challenges. That doesn’t mean there’s not common cause, but people will start to assume all problems are the same. And they’re not.”

What the literal genuine fuck. “Are you inviting me in, or kicking me out?”

“Neither.” Another line through another answer. Ashe can’t tell what question it is, but if everyone is getting it wrong, should she be worried? “Your problems are different than Lia’s problems. Less _dramatic_ than Lia’s problems. Don’t forget that they’re still problems.”

_What._

Ashe is prevented from asking any follow-up questions when Lia stomps in, yanking the door closed behind her. The door has a device on it that keeps it from slamming, so she has to tug twice to get it to close.

She smiles when she sees Ashe. It’s still Lia’s smile.

“Okay. _So,_ _”_ Lia says, in a voice that portends a large serving of drama. And then her hand goes to her forehead and it feels like something has slapped Ashe in the brain and all she’s left seeing is MRO Bill’s bland, punchable face. Mystique staggers as well, flicking blue for a second.

“What the _fuck?_ _”_

“Shit, shit, sorry.” Lia drops her bag next to Ashe’s chair and leans forward, peering into her eyes. “Are you okay?— Clearly it’s a good thing I haven’t tried projection, I think the different brain chemistry is making it _—_ ”

“I’m fine,” Ashe says, but there’s something familiar in the feeling. She can’t help but feel like part of her mind has been shaken lose, although she doesn’t know what that means. But when she blinks, she sees white feathers.

“—I knew there was a mental attunement that I lack right now but perhaps the mind and power are more linked than—” 

“Shut up,” Mystique says, “and tell me, _with words,_ what happened.”

Charles does, rattling off a list of short list of names, computer passwords, and descriptions. Ashe tries not to be horrified at the idea of how much digging they’d done in MRO Bill’s brain, even though he clearly deserved it. Since he apparently thinks it’s okay to just hand teenagers off to mysterious government agencies with no oversight, what the fuck ever.

“I should have told him that I was there because I was worried that Marissa was a mutant, see who he called, oh my god, she’s so _fucking_ racist— I didn’t find out until fourth period, of course, but that answers the question of why she is constantly looking down her nose at us, Ashe— It’s not entirely her fault, considering how she was raised— no Charles it’s at least a little bit her fault, she can think for herself. Also, Gerry Thomas. That kid is on his way to becoming an actual literal Nazi, and someone should probably tell his mother.”

Ashe could have lived without that information. There’s not even a thrill of knowing something she shouldn’t, or vindication that it wasn’t _her_ fault Marissa doesn’t like her. It’s just. Disappointing.

“Shit,” Lia says, reading either Ashe’s mind or her face. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine.” She doesn’t want Lia to ever err on the side of _not_ telling her things.

The door opens again, and all three of them try and look like they’re just having a casual conversation.

But it’s Brook.

Ashe isn’t sure if she’s relieved or embarrassed. Despite her emotional reaction this weekend, she doesn’t need to be looked _after._ Probably.

“So,” her sister says, dragging up a desk as well. “What’s new?”

Mystique stares at her for a long moment. Maybe Lia will tell her what she was thinking later. But before anyone can say anything else, a phone dings: they all reach for their pockets, but Mystique is the one who frowns at the new message.

“They’re here,” she says.

Lia frowns. “Who?”

“Wolverine, Beast and Rogue. Their group was the closest, and I take it they have a plan. They’re all at… the location— I can give you a ride over now, if you want.”

If Lia goes, Ashe is going, and her parents can ground her later. But Lia looks to Brook, for some reason.

“I can’t just skip sixth and seventh period, my parents would literally murder me— not _literally_ , but they’re very stressed about Lia’s academic performance—”

“I can’t skip physics, but I could drive you guys after school,” Brook says quietly. “If this is about… solving the… problem.”

“We have Polish after school,” Charles says. “I’d be a bad guest, ruining Lia’s home life.”

Mystique narrows her eyes, digging the tip of her pen into someone’s quiz. “Charles.”

* * *

There’s terror in Brook’s every footstep, but her mind is fiercely protective— she’d been standing out the door for nearly two full minutes trying to work up the nerve to go in. She’s worried, because Ashe had been a bit of a mess yesterday, and Lia should have called her, should have texted back more frequently, even if she was busy being a mess herself. Maybe when this is over they can— well. They’ll have to talk, at least. Even if she might prefer to face the robot again.

Charles is judgmental, but she doesn’t think he has the right. It was _his robot._ He focuses on its face, its mechanics, its protocols, and Lia wishes she could shake him because his anxiety is all _over_ her and this distraction technique is obvious.

 _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ If he had an answer, she’d know it too. But the idea of seeing his friends had made him want to run, and he doesn’t want to think about it. But that’s tough, because Lia is thinking about it. Beast, Rogue, and Wolverine— she can see them in his memories. _Hank, Logan, Marie._ Hank who he’s known as long as he’s known Erik, who stayed by his side for decades before he left for politics. Logan, loyal, loyal Logan, who Charles didn’t raise, who is who knows how old but with memory gaps that make him seem young. And Rogue, little Rogue, who is going to be grown, now, no longer an awkward teenager. Rogue, who got kidnapped out from under his nose. 

Hank, Logan, Marie. Three people who looked to him for guidance even though they had every reason not to, and what can he do for them? Now? Like this? When he came back the first time, his powers weren’t as finely tuned as normal, but they were still strong. He was still almost capable of everything he had been before, and he still understood how the world worked— now he can’t project, he couldn’t freeze someone without killing them, he can barely filter, and he doesn’t understand the _internet_ —

 _So for the first time in your life you_ _’re not the most powerful mutant in the room,_ Lia thinks, annoyed. Charles should try being a teenage girl more often if he wants to get used to the feeling.

 _I haven_ _’t always been the most powerful mutant in the room,_ For a moment Mrs. Crown’s room is gone, and they’re staring down the Phoenix.

_Which of you came back, though?_

If the world was fair, it would have been Jean. If the world was fair, maybe he wouldn’t have failed his people. Abandoned them, for ten years. Why couldn’t he get himself out of that house? Why did he latch onto a girl who didn’t really ask for this? And now he’s back with no answers for them. Not in any condition to help with a situation that’s gotten infinitely more complicated since he last kept up.

 _They_ _’re not going to mind. They care about you. They love you— well, at least Hank and Logan do._ She knows, because she can remember Hank picking Charles up off the bathroom floor. Calling him from Washington at one in the morning, angry at some congressman or another, making sure Charles was taking care of himself. Rogue, flying a plane away from Alkali Lake. Sitting with him after he’d come back. And Logan, there even when he claimed he didn’t want to be, throwing himself into every fight on Charles’s behalf he could find.

(And hating him, for letting Raven walk away and Alex get drafted. And hating him, for not truly appreciating what a cure could mean. And hating him, for what happened to Jean.)

 _Oh fuck that._ If Lia could get her grandma back, she wouldn’t care about any arguments they’d had. She wouldn’t care how old Hanna looked, so long as she was _herself_ again, talking and knowing what year it was. And all of that is beside the point, anyway, because Charles can’t stay in her head.

She forces her chin up, makes herself skirt past Ashe and Brook’s jumbled minds. “After school is fine,” she says aloud.

_If I can walk into your haunted house, you can face your friends._

(The down side of telepathy: knowing just how disappointed someone is in you.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I wore red plaid pajama shorts and a purple plaid flannel shirt, and didn't notice until a housemate pointed it out. I hope you are all safe and equally fashionable.


	17. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Uh, this is our Airbnb?” Rogue says, recovering gracefully. “The door was unlocked, did we get the wrong address? Simon, you said you had the address—”

Brook offers to drive them— _to keep an eye on them—_ but the fewer faces she’ll be able to pick out of a line-up, the happier Charles is going to be.

“Check in every twenty minutes,” Brook insists, fully aware that someone could steal Ashe’s phone and also aware there’s nothing she can do about it. She won’t tell anyone, but she will if she gets scared enough: if Charles could he’d smooth out those worries, keep her calm—

 _You would do no such thing,_ Lia thinks, even as she’s tempted by the option. _It_ _’s_ Brook. _It_ _’ll be fine._ Hopefully.

Probably.

But that means Mystique is going to have to drive them, and both Lia and Ashe stare at the car in faint trepidation. It’s a nice, nondescript Honda— the type that Erik takes great pleasure in throwing at cops. Every emotion in the car is on the driver’s seat, steering wheel and gear shift: no one has been in the passenger or back seat for months, if not years. And nothing about it says _dangerous internationally hunted mutant._ Which might make it worse.

Still.

 _Oh, I see,_ Charles thinks. _You_ _’re fine with trespassing, sneaking out of the house, consorting with terrorists, fighting a Sentinel, but getting into a teacher’s car,_ that’s _what really makes you stop and think?_

Scowling, Lia subjects Charles to an entire lifetime’s worth of Adult In Authority Position Danger lectures, while he remembers how he had to sit next to little Jesse Bickham’s bed and mentally fend off nightmares for his entire first week of school. Of course, if Jesse’s parents had been concerned enough about their son to care about a teacher in his bedroom watching him sleep, Jesse would have had fewer nightmares.

It’s good, when parents care enough to protect their kids. His mother could have stood to do a little more of that.

Still, Charles feels it’s only fair to turn Lia’s thoughts back on her: if _he,_ almost defenseless, can get into a car with his bitterest rival, then Lia can get a ride from a teacher whose mind she can literally read.

_I thought Erik was your bitterest rival._

_No, Erik was my_ biggest _rival, but Mystique was much more bitter._

Ashe is the one to get in the car first, sliding along the backseat to make room for Lia and thinking _I guess she_ _’s not_ really _a teacher._ Then: _does that make it weirder?_

After three years of teaching, Mystique may, in fact, be a teacher— and while she might not _enjoy_ it, Charles gets the sense that she isn’t _not_ enjoying it. She wouldn’t have stayed so long if there was nothing there for her, but Mystique’s mind is the kind of calm that you can only develop with practice, and he is trying not to look.

She drives them out of North Salem and towards Salem Center. It’ll be dark soon— the sun is reflecting orange off the reservoir, and Lia tries to look at it, and not think about her nerves. Or Charles’s nerves. Maybe in a couple hours this will all be solved, and everything will be back to normal, and Erik and Charles will show her how to control her powers and things will be how they were.

Except if Charles knew how to control her powers, then she would, too.

 _Practice,_ he think wearily.

Yeah.

When Mystique pulls up on Graymalkin Lane, she checks for neighbors before gesturing that it’s safe to leave the car. She stares at them once they’re out— sees where Ashe is standing, on Lia’s right and just a little bit back, because Ashe is still afraid of the older mutants— and remembers the side of Erik’s head, the curve of his shoulder, framing decades of memories before he left her behind.

She’d tried to warn Ashe off of that, but she doesn’t think she did a very good job— three years of working with teenagers is not enough to understand them. Especially the human ones. But human-mutant relations are never going to last— that’s inevitable, and Ashe might as well not build her life around Lia. She seems alright, for a human, and it’s not like Mystique wants her to be hurt.

Of course, Moira had seemed alright before she tried to kill Erik and shot Charles in the back.

Stung, Lia reaches for Ashe’s hand as they walk up the drive, letting her friend's nerves cover her palm. This sets Ashe’s mind buzzing, which almost distracts Lia from the fact that as she speeds through Charles’s memory, she can’t find any significant human connections, aside from Moira, who he saw, what, twenty times in fifty years? For a renown human-mutant relations champion, that’s… not promising.

 _Lia,_ Charles points out, _did I have_ any _significant relationships outside the people I lived with?_

_Aside from the obvious?_

_Very rarely do the people doing the fighting get to experience the benefits. What the fuck was all of it for, if you think you and Ashe can_ _’t stay friends?_ Mystique might not even fully believe it herself— she hadn’t even bothered to say it aloud, although she must have known perfectly well that Lia would pick up her thoughts. Maybe she was going for the subtle approach. Still, separatism is stupid: mutants are a tiny fraction of the population, despite how the government talks. Even if they could form a commune of some sort— _a kibbutz,_ Erik had said once in passing, before shrugging it off as if it was a joke— they’d still have to get supplies from _somewhere,_ and—

“Stay on the porch for a moment,” Mystique says, unlocking the front door. She opens it slowly, and in front of her Lia can just barely see four people sitting around the kitchen table, eating pizza.

She’s seen them in Charles’s memories, and again as ghosts. They look a lot different in the flesh— Rogue has changed the most, of course, her round teenage face a little sharper, hair a bit shorter. And are those new lines on Hank’s face? It’s hard to tell from here. Logan, of course, looks the same as he did that day Ororo and Scott brought him in, but he’s not the looming, legless figure Lia had seen in memory.

They all look up when Mystique enters, not recognizing her. Mystique realizes this at the same time.

“What are you doing in my house?” she asks, voice carefully controlled to conceal her mirth.

The mutants look at each other, then at Erik.

“Uh, this is our Airbnb?” Rogue says, recovering gracefully. “The door was unlocked, did we get the wrong address? Simon, you said you had the address—”

“I _did,_ ” Hank says, reaching one furry hand into his pocket as if for a phone— but it’s a tranquilizer gun in there. Since when does Hank need a gun?

Logan stands, approaching with his hands out. “I’m sure we can get this worked out." He betrays no signs of the suspicion that’s thick in his footsteps. A much better actor than he was ten years ago, he even tries to cover his deep sniff by rubbing his nose, before his mind goes bright with recognition. “In fact—”

He and Mystique move at the same time: his claws come out as she turns blue, ducking just under his arm and wrenching it around— less than a second later they end in a stalemate with his claws at her throat, her elbow in his windpipe and her plastic gun pointed at Hank, and that’s when Erik finally loses it, howling out a laugh. He would have banged on the table, left a bright spot of joy, if he’d thought he could get away with it.

Logan gives up his last bit of air to say, “you asshole.”

“Mystique?” Hank says, standing. Then, to Erik, “you _knew?_ _”_

Erik makes a noise that sounds almost exactly like _teeheehee—_ laughing at the look on Logan’s face, at Hank’s rising indignation, and there’s ten years of stress that’s breaking because Mystique is _here,_ Charles is _here,_ and they have a plan and everything is going to be okay— it ripples around his hands and face—

“Fuck you,” Rogue says— that delights Erik too, but she’s pulling off a glove, leaving streaks of anger on the fabric, and Charles had never had a better moment than he has now.

“How many times,” he says, opening the door the rest of the way, “do I have to tell you that fighting is _only_ allowed in the training rooms?”

Logan goes still, _fear-hope_ visible on his skin. Rogue’s hand falls back to her sides, and Hank just stands there with his mouth open. _Catching flies,_ Sharon would have said.

 _You are a massive drama queen,_ Lia thinks, not without respect for the craft.

Ashe squeezes her hand once— _wild to be the ones who know what_ _’s going on for a change—_ and Lia squeezes it back before Charles drops it and enters the house properly.

“Is that— are you—” Hank stops, then looks again at Erik, thinking _Charles or not Charles was it a joke Erik wouldn_ _’t have lied about that much didn’t say— but how to prove— get the kid a PET scan— would her parents need to sign forms— he didn’t say he’d adopted another mutant child, too young for fighting—_

Charles waves a little. “Hi, Hank.” Oh god, he’s getting choked up. He’ll blame Lia’s chemical responses. “Rogue.” And the man who finally breaks free of Mystique, stepping forward, and then stopping, because he has no idea what to do. “Logan.”

Logan looks over Ashe, briefly, then back at Charles and Lia. “How do you know it’s for real?” the question is directed at Erik, but he doesn’t turn his head. _Must have gone through tests— not like him to— well he_ _’d absolutely lie about this but if he was really pulling a con— he wouldn’t use Charles— probably— he did at Alkali Lake— and Charles hasn’t done the brain thing— but that expression— that’s_ his— _what the fuck—_

Erik spreads his hands. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“Oh, pardon me,” Rogue says, “Remind me how we met?”

“Yes, but I never _lied_ about it.”

Not full trust in this group, then. Not from Rogue. But she’s comfortable standing up to him, has done it before— she's remembering the two of them standing back to back, trying to hold off a Sentinel Services squad, when Piotr had been thrown off a building half a block away. Rogue had dropped her gun, grabbed Magneto’s elbow with one hand and thrown out the other, catching him mid-fall. Magneto had nodded to her afterward, and they’d both privately decided that they’d come to an Understanding.

“It’s not just Charles,” Lia says, keeping her accent as American as possible so they’ll note the difference. “I’m also here. Hi. I’m Lia.” She waves. “And this is Ashe.”

Ashe doesn’t wave.

“Can he…” Logan taps his forehead.

“He’s not very good at that right now.” Lia bites their tongue before Charles can try to blame it on Lia’s _limited_ brain.

 _That_ ’ _s not how I meant it._

“Charles?” Hank says carefully. “Are you— I mean, do you both answer, or—”

“We take turns,” Charles says.

Pause. “So if you’re really Charles… you’ll know what record you listened to for almost all of 1964?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Henry, it’s not enough to be trapped in the body of a child— _hey!—_ but now you want to do this too?”

Hank grins. Charles thinks, _hell with it,_ and flings the tune in Hank’s direction, with all the subtlety of an ice pick. Hank cringes. “Okay. It’s Charles.”

Logan moves to hug them, and then stops, thinking _ah shit, girl I don_ _’t know._ The others are frozen with the same dilemma, and Lia hesitates a second, feeling how hard it is for Charles to stop himself from moving, and then does it for him.

It takes a moment for Logan to adjust to an armful of teenager, but he’s attracted a bit of a following from younger mutants and so he relaxes, giving Charles a careful pat on Lia’s back. A trail of delight behind him, Hank straight up _leaps_ over the table, and Lia tries to wrap herself in Charles’s joy instead of picking up the spike in Ashe’s anxiety.

“So,” Mystique says, when she’s decided that the mushy things have gone on long enough. “What was the song?”

The song was ‘Burning Bridges’ by Jack Scott. Lia hadn’t heard it until Charles thought of it, but now she agrees that that’s proper embarrassing. “Never you mind,” Charles says, with greater dignity than Lia could have ever pulled off herself.

“But this is fascinating,” Hank mutters when he pulls away. He’s got his Science! face on. “Lia, you’re also a mutant, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Some kind of emotional synesthesia,” Charles says. “Quite fascinating, really.”

“So, telepathy adjacent, then. And you?” it takes a moment to realize that he’s speaking to Ashe. “I assume you’re the other one, who found the house— what’s your mutation?”

 _Homosexuality and dumbassery,_ Ashe thinks. “None. Just human.”

“Hm.” Surprise is clear in his mind and at the end of his— paws? Hands?— but he tries not to let it show.

“So,” Lia says, trying to turn the conversation elsewhere. “Is there a plan?”

* * *

The plan, to Ashe, sounds absolutely sensible. Or at least, Hank says it with enough confidence that he makes it sound sensible, despite the actual steps not making any sense.

Charles hates it.

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“Do you have a better one?” the girl called Rogue asks. She’s in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, is very pretty, and looks like she could beat up a lot of people at once. “Kitty has learned how to send someone’s mind about three minutes into the past— she _might_ be able to do something about this, if we had a functional lab and an abundance of time. The only other telepath we can reach right now is Maddie, and she’s stuck in Alberta with no passport until Blink or Nightcrawler can get to her. And I’m not sure what another telepath could tell you that you don’t already know. Lia— it’s Lia? Are you okay with doing it this way?”

“I guess.” Lia frowns, looking to Ashe as though Ashe is going to have an answer. As though Ashe is going to say anything but _fuck yes go for it,_ because, no offense to the other mutants who this will probably be unpleasant for, but she wants Lia back more.

 _Sorry,_ she thinks, in case they were listening to that.

Whatever.

“Well,” Hank says, clapping his hands together. “No time like the present. I think it will be best if we go to Cerebro, since that’s where the, ah, the traces are going to be, if there are any. Has it been disturbed? Since, ah…?”

“We went in and out,” Magneto says. “Didn’t stay long.” He turns and studies Logan for a moment, clearly remembering something. “It should still work.”

“We’ll have to hope. Now… perhaps someone can stay with Ashe, here?”

 _Do not piss off the giant mutant with claws. Also do not piss off the mutant with knives for hands._ “Uh, yeah, no,” Ashe says. _“_ I helped find Charles. I’m coming with you. It’s not like I don’t know what’s down there.” She doesn’t know _exactly_ what Cerebro does or how it works, but she figures what she knows is enough.

The X-Men do not seem comforted by this fact. “There’s a chance it’ll be… ah… and Cerebro isn’t something we usually _show_ people, _Erik—_ ”

Magneto studies his nails. It's clearly for effect: he has yellow old-man nails and they're always going to look weird. “I had to keep an eye on her. Anyway—”

“She shut down the Sentinel in the Danger Room,” Lia says, making something in Ashe’s chest go warm. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”

“Magneto did a lot of it,” Ashe mumbles, because she doesn’t want them thinking she’s a _threat._

“Well, sure, but you were the one that did the actual—”

“That’s very brave,” Hank interrupts. “But it’s going to be, ah, potentially upsetting, and we don’t know how long it’ll take—” he’s using the voice grown-ups use when they want you to understand that everything they’re doing is for a child’s own good. As though any of them are particularly concerned about Ashe’s own good.

“I’m coming,” she says, resisting the urge to reach for Lia’s hand.

“But—”

Nope. “You all really want to get Charles back, and that’s great, I want you to get him back too, but if you’re all here for Charles then someone has to be here for Lia because right now Charles can control her brain.” Charles could smooth things open with Lia’s parents, but Brook knows where they are, and if Ashe goes missing her parents will tear up the entire country looking for her. Especially once Brook tells them who they met in Connecticut. The X-Men aren’t going to want that kind of scrutiny, not when they’ve just gotten their cool and not-transportable machines back.

Not that Ashe _really_ thinks they’ll do anything to Lia. At least, not on purpose. But if somehow something came down to Charles or her—

They’d all been so happy to see him, and they don’t know Lia from Eve.

Mystique claps Ashe on the shoulder, giving Ashe a good whiff of old-lady sweater. Her clothes were real after all, and they look ridiculous on a blue and scaly mutant. “Now that’s settled, can we _go?_ ”

“Uh, no,” Logan says. “Why are _you_ coming? You in any version of Cerebro has _never_ ended well.”

“It did the first time Charles used it,” Magneto says slyly, and Mystique, Rogue and Logan all round on him with the same expression.

“Relax, Logan,” Charles says. “She’s not planning to kill me, she just wants to steal the Blackbird before Erik gets to it. But she’s welcome to come anyway.” Pause. “Since it’s specifically modified to prevent either of them from ever using it. Hank’s the one to talk to about updating that.” His bright smile looks off on Lia’s mouth. “Shall we?”

Mystique’s fingers dig even harder into Ashe’s shoulder, and she wonders if she should get even more afraid. Fear has been such a constant state over the last few days that at some point it’s becoming hard to judge how much is appropriate. “Also, Ashe made a good point earlier. I’m also not here for Charles.”

Ashe doesn’t think Mrs. Crown has ever called her by her nickname before, and it takes a moment to realize that she’s avoiding giving the assembled X-Men any more identifiable information. Even though Charles will be able to tell them everything later.

If this works.

Which it might not.

“Also that,” Charles agrees, “but I wasn’t about to tell them you’d gone _soft._ ”

“That’s because I haven’t.” Mystique lets Ashe go, turning back into Mrs. Crown as she stalks towards the door, muttering something that sounds a lot like “kill you all with my feet.”

Ashe texts Brook: _still alive. Going to the GML house. Will lose reception._

Before they’re allowed on the street, Mystique checks first to see if the neighbors are looking. Logan seems to find something weird about.

“The real Victoria Crown _is_ alive,” Charles says, but Ashe thinks she herself is the only one that finds that comforting.

Mystique has killed people. Magneto has killed people. _Logan_ looks like he’s killed people, and he’s supposed to be one of the good ones. Whatever that means, since they all work together now— or at least, Magneto works with the X-Men now.

Mystique clearly does not. Even in the rapidly fading light, Ashe can tell that Logan and Rogue are watching her carefully as they shuffle single-file through Magneto’s hold in the fence, and approach the school.

“So, Mystique,” Hank says, clearly reaching for casual and missing hilariously. “How has, um, the small-town life treated you?”

“Great.” Mystique’s voice is like sandpaper. “How’s being on the run? A step down from global politics?”

“Not as different as you might imagine.”

“Ha.”

“Killed anyone interesting lately?” Logan asks, and Mystique stops walking.

“No. It’s a shame there aren’t any interesting people here, or I’d be tempted to start.”

“You think that’d work out for you?”

She looks him up and down. “I’ve come out on top more than once.”

Does she mean in a fight? Please, God, let her mean in a fight. Because Mystique is still her Social Studies teacher, and maybe once Charles is back to himself he can get rid of the mental images like he got rid of her memory of _Swan Lake._

“Watch it.” Rogue takes off a glove, and Mystique wiggles her eyebrows.

“If you don’t all _shut up,_ ” says Lia, “then only Rogue, Logan and Ashe are going and the rest of you can wait out here.” She grabs Ashe’s hand, pulling her into the house while the group of mutants stares after them, because Ashe’s best friend is a _badass_ who yells at very scary potential terrorists like it’s _nothing._ Apparently. Holy shit.

“You realize you need me for the elevators,” Magneto points out, the first to follow them into the entryway. He sounds a little petulant when he adds, “and _I_ didn’t say anything.”

“ _I_ know where the stairs are. And you think I didn’t notice you egging them on back there at the house?” Charles mutters, low enough that only he and Ashe can pick it up. Unless Logan and Hank have, like, super-senses, or something.

Magneto shrugs. “Don’t act like you didn’t like the chance to make an entrance.”

“And that comment about Cerebro— I wouldn’t hold out hope on getting the band back together.”

Is that what that had been? So Magneto and Mystique and Charles were friends, and then only Magneto and Mystique were friends, but now Magneto is friends with Charles’s old friends and definitely _not_ friends with Mystique, and she’s mad about it— but she’s also mad at Magneto— well, that’s fair, maybe, if Lia and Ashe had a fight and Lia went off to be friends with Ellie, Ashe would be pretty pissed off as well.

It’s not impossible. If Ellie is okay, if she ever comes home, then she and Lia are going to have more in common than Lia and Ashe will.

And if that happened, and Lia came back ten years later, what would Ashe do?

(Forgive it all, probably. But she’d have a good sulk first.) 

Lia squeezes Ashe’s hand. God, Lia is going to think Ashe is so clingy and pathetic, and she’s _not—_ well, maybe she is, but she wouldn’t have, like, _shared_ that— she’s _allowed_ to be dramatic, under these circumstances—

Magneto gestures, and the elevator doors open. Ashe half expects screaming ghosts to come at them, but of course, they aren’t there. All the ghosts are safely trapped in Lia’s head.

It’s not big enough for all of them to get in it comfortably, but it’s clear that no one is willing to be left behind, so they just have to jostle for position. Mostly Logan and Hank. It would be funny if they could see better, probably.

It’s the setup to a fun joke. _How many of the FBI_ _’s most wanted can you fit in (1) elevator?_

At least the ride is short, and there are no exploding men greeting them at the end of it.

“If I try to open Cerebro's doors again, do you have a back-up robot waiting to attack?” Magneto asks, feeling along the wall until the generator clicks on.

Hank straightens. “That worked? Oh, excellent, we didn’t have a good way to test it.”

“It was real excellent,” Mystique says sourly. “Nearly broke both my legs and killed the kids. But sure.”

“It wasn’t going to kill you,” he says, in what he clearly thinks is a reassuring tone. “It was just supposed to slow you down enough that we could get here. If we were living in the house at the time. And then _we_ could kill you. If necessary.”

Both Mystique and Magneto snort, and perhaps out of spite, Magneto rattles Cerebro's doors, and again, the Danger Room doors open. Ashe flinches back, and then hopes no one noticed that she had.

“How about _you_ fight the robot this time, Beast?” Mystique says. “Good to keep in fighting shape.”

He smiles, as though she’d offered him her seat on the bus. “My shape is just _fine,_ thank you.” Then, louder, “System override, Hank McCoy, _Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocniosis._ ”

“Simulation ended,” the voice says, and the doors close.

“What was _that?_ _”_ Rogue asks. “Pneu…”

“Mystique can imitate my voice,” he says, “but does she know the scientific name for silicosis?”

“Fuck you, McCoy,” Mystique says in Hank’s voice, leaving no doubt about what she’ll be learning as soon as she gets a free moment. “If you’d thought about it that much, you should have kept me out of Cerebro too.” So saying she steps forward, her face changing until the doors open in their X formation.

FOX News always warned that mutants were dangerous.

They hardly ever warned that mutants were _petty._

Ashe catches Lia’s eye, and Lia grins.

* * *

Lia hadn’t looked much at Cerebro before, since it had been full of, you know, screaming ghosts and terror, and then Charles had been disoriented. Now, she looks over the edge of the catwalk, and thinks about how Hank had suggested that there are little bits of Charles rotted at the bottom.

Or at least. They hope there are. What happens when someone disintegrates from mental energy?

The confusion and _hope-joy-love_ from Saturday is still thick on the floor, and it’s much nicer than the fear all over the upstairs. Charles really hopes he doesn’t die here, because he doesn’t want that to be his last memory of his house.

He’s probably not going to die. He’s tried not to think about it, so that he wouldn’t worry Lia, but it all depends on what counts as _healing,_ right? There’s a decent chance he just… disappears. The others are trying to avoid the thought as well, but they’re out of practice hiding their thoughts from telepaths.

At least, if he dies again, he’ll have helped fix what he broke. They know where the house is, where the Blackbird is, Lia will know what to say to the banks— the best plan would be to catch Mystique by surprise, have Rogue steal her power, go to the bank as Charles, get everything squared away, and then fake Charles’s death so that his assets can be moved properly to a place they can access.

Lia wonders if she’ll even keep his memories. 

The ones she’s seen directly, maybe. Surely not all of them. And maybe she’ll forget, over time, so if Charles dies it’s best to do everything as quick as she can.

“Alright,” he says, turning to Rogue. “Shall we?”

 _Is this going to hurt?_ Lia wonders, pulling up Charles’s memory of Logan’s memory. Yeah. Okay. It’s going to hurt. She sits down, to lessen the chance that she falls off the catwalk and cracks her head open on the metal below.

Rogue kneels in front of her, her worry lingering in the air. “I’m going to try and just get Charles, but there’s a good chance you’ll lose your powers for a bit.”

“How long?”

“At least a few seconds, maybe a few hours. _Poss_ ibly days, but hopefully not.”

Right. Okay. There are worse things. There are lots of worse things. Like Charles getting stuck in Rogue’s head— he’d rather be stuck in Lia’s, which isn’t fair, but there’s a lot more _history_ with Rogue and while it will be nice to not be a child, they both have parasitic mutations: they’ll either be miserable together, or they’ll be unstoppable but Charles will never be able to touch anyone again—

Rogue’s hand is hovering over one of Lia’s, and Lia takes a deep breath.

 _It_ ’ _s been real, Charles._

 _Certainly something,_ he agrees, because she knows how he’s feeling and he knows the same. And, fuck it, nobody’s going to care— so as Rogue takes one of Lia’s hands, Lia grabs Ashe’s with the other. Ashe squeezes it back, her bright flare of feeling that last thing Lia can see before something dark and heavy crawls up her arm. The world is colder, now, and the thoughts and emotions of everyone around her are going dark. Maybe it’s not just Charles that’s dying, maybe it’s both of them, or maybe it’s the opposite— everyone in the room is dying but her— and it hurts, _shit_ it hurts, but she can’t make a noise, can’t scream, and that’s probably for the best— she holds Ashe tighter and it feels like she’s losing something even as she’s technically seeing more clearly than she has in months _—_

“Got him.” Rogue lets go.

Lia sways into Ashe’s leg, and her friend kneels next to her. Ashe is warm and comforting and Lia can’t see how she’s feeling at all.

_Charles?_

“I’m over here.” Rogue’s southern accent has been replaced by a British one, and Lia wants to laugh, but she’s not sure she can. She just wants to _sleep._ It’s definitely going to be more than a few minutes before her powers come back, before she stops feeling like she’s blindfolded.

“Hey,” Logan says, “at least you didn’t pass out, kid. Good job.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Ashe says, because Lia can’t.

Rogue stands, tries to turn, and then stops again. “We should probably stay sitting down, anyway,” she mutters. It’s got to be double-disorienting, getting both Charles and Lia’s powers at once, and Lia would feel sorry for her if she didn’t want her powers back herself. And if Rogue wasn’t a cool, badass mutant who Ashe thought was pretty.

_Lia._

It’s not actually Charles thinking it. At least, not in her head.

If her conscience has picked up his voice, she’s going to be really put out. Especially since she can still remember some of what he got up to when he was younger.

Logan sits down in front of Rogue, cross-legged, and she frowns. “You should probably lie down.”

He looks back at Erik, Hank and Mystique, and it’s infuriating to not know what any of them are thinking. They’re nervous, probably? God, how did she _live_ like this?

Huffing, Logan uncrosses his legs, and lies down flat on the catwalk.

“Let’s do this,” he says gruffly. Rogue doesn’t move.

“Logan—”

“Hey.” They stare at each other for a long moment. Charles hadn’t worried about Logan dying, because Logan has survived Jean and a literal nuclear bomb. Should he have? It doesn’t matter, because Logan reaches forward, saying “Charles, you’re going to owe me some really nice cigars for this,” and cups Rogue’s cheek. She puts her palm on top of his hand, trapping it on both sides, and— is this what it looked like with Lia? Black lines creeping up his skin, following his veins. Logan makes a terrible gasping sound, and Hank steps forward, but he’s stopped by Erik’s hand on his chest.

Ashe’s heart is beating, _thud-thud-thud-thud,_ and Lia adjusts her head a bit so she can press her ear against it. A reminder that they’re alive, now that the minds are quiet and emotions are gone.

Logan twitches, veins now fully black and bulging— one of his hands flies out, claws extending then retracting— Erik and Mystique take a healthy step backwards, and Erik has to drag Hank with them.

“We need to stop,” Charles says. “This isn’t going to work, it’ll kill him—”

“No.” Rogue is breathing like she’s about to cry, but she sets her jaw. She does, not Charles, and maybe it’s only because he was in her head that Lia can tell the difference. Lia’s glad she can’t read their minds now, and maybe it’s good she doesn’t have her powers, because this looks devastating enough.

_Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—_

“Holy shit,” Ashe whispers, “holy shit—”

Logan twitches again before falling entirely still, and this time Rogue does let go, pressing her hand to her eyes instead.

Faster than a blink, Hank is there, listening to Logan’s chest.

“He’s alive,” There’s a strange slant to Rogue’s words. “That was all I could take without… and now I want a cigar.”

“The healing,” Erik says. “Can you feel that?”

She shrugs, and the metal doors warp.

“Magneto.” Hank turns the word into a warning.

The doors pop back into place. Erik’s face doesn’t change.

Rogue stretches out so that she’s lying next to Logan on the cold floor, heedless of the dust. If she didn’t have Ashe to lean against, Lia might do the same thing herself. She’ll need to shower anyway. “If you get bored, feel free to go get us some beers.”

Hank joins them on the floor. Crouched, like a gargoyle. “I’m so glad I wasn’t here when you took on Logan’s personality as a teenager. This is very unsettling.”

 _“That’s_ the part that unsettles you?” Mystique asks, nudging Logan with one scaly toe. Lia hadn’t even noticed when she’d ditched her shoes. “Is he even going to be able to move, without his powers? With that skeleton? How did you even get him off Liberty Island?”

“Jean,” Rogue says shortly.

“Huh.”

“I’d offer to move him, but your infirmary beds are probably disgusting.” Now Erik does sit down, though he wipes away a bit of dust with his foot first.

Are they going to wait here until Logan wakes up? Lia hasn’t checked the time, but it’s got to be at least six, and her parents are going to want to hear from her before too long. But she doesn’t want to risk leaving, in case this works.

She taps the back of Ashe’s hand once, in a question, since she really doesn’t want to do all the moving she’d have to do to see Ashe’s face. Ashe catches the finger and holds it, briefly: Lia desperately wishes she could see whatever emotion was left behind, but she thinks she knows anyway. Reassurance. _I_ _’m staying._

Rogue nods once, though whether it’s at Lia’s thought, someone else’s, or just because she was feeling it, it’s impossible to say. Well. Lia could ask, but she won’t, because it’d be embarrassing, and words are hard right now, and—

“Holy shit.” It’s Ashe, leaning away— Lia does sit up, then, peering with her over the edge towards the blue dome below them. Something is moving.

“Could be mice,” she says, doubtful.

“Through metal walls?” Mystique does a perfect leap over Rogue and Logan, landing at Lia’s side. “Something’s happening.”

“Whatever it is, it itches,” Charles says, without opening Rogue’s eyes. His tone is flat, but he’s probably beside himself with nerves. Unless Logan and Rogue’s influence has really mellowed him out.

Lia wouldn’t know.

But something is definitely growing, down at the bottom.

Logan’s finger twitches.

“Logan?” Hank hops a bit so he’s kneeling next to his face. “Logan?”

“Mmph,” Logan mutters. “Owe me even more cigars.” His nudges his right hand across the floor with visible effort, finding Rogue next to him. When he reaches her finger, he holds on.

Again, the black veins.

Again, he goes limp.

Rogue doesn’t move, keeping her eyes firmly shut. Breathing carefully.

 _Do you guys have a therapist, or something?_ Lia thinks pointedly, and Rogue snorts a bit.

“It’s growing faster,” Erik reports. He steps off the edge, and Lia is about to yell— but he’s got both his arms out, floating down to the bottom. Which is… so cool, honestly.

“Be careful,” Hank warns, but it’s hard to tell if Erik listens: he lands on the slanted floor, his powers the only thing to keep him from sliding down the bottom of the sphere, and picks up whatever the thing is. He flies back up with one arm out to steady him.

Like Superman. If Superman were about ninety years old, and holding a literal pound of flesh.

Because that’s all it looks like. Lia had half-expected a fetus-looking thing, or something like that piece of Voldemort’s soul, but it doesn’t really look like anything recognizable. Erik places it on the ground next to Rogue as though it were the crown jewels, and takes a couple steps backwards. Lia and Ashe have to scoot a bit to make room for him.

In silence, they all watch the body of Charles Xavier continue to grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The way I originally wrote this, they just all sort of reassembled, but then I discovered [this scene](https://runawaymarbles.tumblr.com/post/615159617861861376/1how-did-i-never-know-this-clip-existed-2-can). The real struggle with Charles "It's apple pecan" Xavier and Erik "Drop a football stadium" Lehnsherr (and, while we're at it, Raven "I Am The President of the United States!!!" Darkholme) is it's hard to write them being dramatic ENOUGH. 
> 
> (Me @ me: sometimes we have to watch Mystique inflitrating Stryker's lair for reSEARCH, okay?)


	18. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waited a couple days to post in case Yahoo was going to start letting AO3 emails through again, but it seems they have not. Thoughts and prayers are with all of you who use Yahoo right now. Hope you make it here eventually.

If Ashe were more science-minded, she’d be fascinated.

Instead she’s just grossed out. And a little bored.

Now that he's no longer doubling in size every couple minutes, watching Charles grow is like watching a minute hand move: if she stares hard enough she can _almost_ tell it’s happening, but sometimes it might just be a trick of the light.

Every now and then, Logan twitches. But he seems beholden to a sense of purpose that goes beyond consciousness, because every time he starts to stir, he reaches for Rogue, and promptly passes out again. Charles himself doesn’t seem to want to watch his body reform— or the entire thing is simply to exhausting for Rogue— because they’d only opened one eye for a moment to look.

If it were her, Ashe thinks she'd want to watch, but maybe not when everyone’s around. Especially towards the end because— oh, _shit,_ he’s going to be naked, isn’t he.

“And cold,” Charles says. “I will also be cold.”

“Can you feel it?” Hank asks, fascinated. He’s either used to Charles starting mid-conversation, or he doesn’t care. “The cold, the floor.”

“There’s nothing to feel. Hopefully I will once there’s a functional brain in there.”

“I suppose the clothes you left here won’t be in any condition to be worn.” The furry mutant tugs at his collar, as though it's _warm_ in here. Didn’t he like, hang out with Obama and stuff? It’s kind of hard to imagine. “I suppose you could wear my coat, and unless Logan's powers cure your paralysis, someone will have to carry you back to… wherever we go.”

Ashe imagines that she’s not the only one wondering how they didn’t think of this problem before.

“Scott’s clothes are still here,” she says, unsure which is worse: the idea of an elderly man being carried out of here in only Hank’s pullover, feet and bits swinging free, or acknowledging how carefully she went through their stuff. But Charles already knows. “They looked, um, pretty carefully packed away. Might be less… mildewy than the rest.”

No one says anything for a moment, and Ashe wishes she hadn’t brought it up. But then—

“That’s a good idea,” Mystique says. “He’s on the second floor, right? I’ll just—”

“ _Ra_ ven, stop _try_ ing to _st_ eal my _plaaane._ _”_

In near unison, Lia, Magneto and Hank exhale heavily through their noses in what's almost a laugh. Mystique looks about as taken aback as Ashe feels.

“Is there any reason this has to finish in Cerebro?” Magneto asks. He’s been sitting almost perfectly still for… however long it’s been. A long while: Ashe hasn’t checked her phone. Maybe he learned to do that in jail. “We solve the problem if we move him now. If he continues at this rate, it’ll take days. Logan will have to be fed at some point.”

“And I assume you’re planning to use my house to do it?” Mystique doesn’t look impressed. “You didn’t trust me to be in _this_ house, but you want to live in mine for a few days?”

She’d seemed to be alright with Magneto by the end of Saturday. As far as Ashe knows, they’ve been bunkered together all weekend. Was she just looking for her moment to strike, or does she hate the X-Men that much?

Maybe she just doesn’t like being outnumbered. 

“We’ll owe you,” Hank says. “ _Not_ the plane. But… we’ll owe you.”

This clearly holds some kind of significance for her, because she considers, then stands. “There’s five of us and one bed, so we’ll have to arm wrestle.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “Charles should obviously get it.”

“ _Charles_ is currently a blob of flesh the size of a basketball with no sense of comfort.”

 _This is the best argument of my life,_ Ashe thinks to Lia, before remembering that Lia has no way of picking up her thoughts. Charles and Rogue do, though, and one of them snorts, giving Ashe a slight nod before getting up at last. It takes a good bit of doing, and Rogue has to catch Hank’s shoulder.

“I think Lia’s powers are fading a bit. Maybe? There’s less… stuff.” she waves a hand, but that might be more for balance. “You should have them— it?— back soon.”

Ashe half expects Lia to be disappointed, given how upset she’s been about the side effects, but instead she seems cheered at the prospect. As much as she seems to have the energy to be cheered: she looks like finals week ran her over with a truck. But she gets up as well, and Ashe moves with her.

Magneto twitches his fingers, and, starting with his shoulders, Logan rises like a giant puppet.

“How much metal is he _wearing?_ ” Ashe asks, feeling rather stupid as she does.

“All of it.” One of Logan’s hands waves at her. “Metal skeleton.”

“Good Lord, Erik,” Charles mutters, and Magneto lets the hand drop.

 _Metal skeleton?_ “So how does he… walk?”

Rogue shoots Erik a look that definitely means _do not make Logan walk._ “Without his powers? He doesn’t.”

Right. Sure. Okay. Was he born with a metal skeleton? How could he possibly be? But then, how do you get a metal skeleton _after_ you're born? Are skeleton transplants a thing? It seems like they shouldn't be a thing, but giant basements under boarding schools that have a dome that big that lets you control the mind of everyone who has ever been in your house also don't seem like a thing. But here they are.

They all shuffle back into to the hall, and then pack themselves back into the elevator. Charles-the-flesh-blob is cradled in Hank’s arms, and Logan floats high enough that his head is nearly touching the ceiling. Scowling, Mystique ripples into a child who looks around five years old so she can fit better around his ankles. It’s hard to say which sight is more disturbing, but soon Ashe doesn’t have to choose: the second the door closes, the elevator lights go dark.

She yelps. And then wishes she hadn't.

“Don’t want to leave the generator running,” Magneto says cheerfully.

_“Dick.”_

“Was that Rogue, Charles or Logan?”

“All three of us— _do not involve me in this._ Me an’ Logan, then.”

The doors have opened again by the time Ashe is able to get her phone light on. They squeeze out into the entryway, and Mystique returns to normal size. Rogue-and-Charles are still walking like they’re half-conscious: it must be draining, trying to regrow a whole body, and maybe that’s why they’re all standing around like dumbasses when he says “Someone’s here.”

“Ashe!” Footsteps on the stairs, a light swinging wildly, and Erik and Hank fling themselves into Charles’s office with a level of physical comedy that wouldn’t be out of place in _Scooby Doo,_ pulling Rogue and Logan’s body behind them. Mystique has her hand on the doorframe when Brook comes around the corner, giant flashlight in hand.

“ _There_ you are, where the _hell,_ everyone has been _freaking out—_ _”_ Brook grabs Ashe like she’s going to shake her, but pulls her into a hug instead.

“Um,” Ashe pats her sister on the back, trying to turn her head so that she can make eye contact with Lia. “What? I told you where we were.”

“Yeah but I couldn’t tell _them._ Lia’s parents expected her home at sundown, so when she didn’t pick up, they called Mom, and Mom thought you were at Lia’s, so—”

“Sundown— oh, _fuck,_ ” Lia says, with feeling. “It’s the last night of Hanukkah, and I’m _deaaaaaaaaad._ _”_

At least they’re only dead in the nice, safe, angry-parents way, and not in the unsafe, terrorist-mutant-robot-or-Sentinels way. It feels like far more than eight days since latkes. Since they’d seen the memory of Charles’s return.

A lifetime, maybe.

“Also this house is really creepy and gross and I can’t believe you’ve been hanging out here for months—”

“—We haven’t been _hanging out,_ ” Ashe objects.

Brook’s light moves to where Mystique is standing, half on her toes like she’s ready to fight, and then at the door behind her. It’s slightly ajar, and though there’s no motion visible behind it, Brook isn’t entirely stupid. “Do I want to know?”

“Nope,” Lia says.

“Are you still, uh—” Brook taps her forehead.

“No. No, we… solved that.”

Pause.

“Is he in there?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mystique says, becoming Mrs. Crown once again. “You two should go home before anyone calls the cops. It’ll… be a long time, anyway, and there’s nothing you can do.” It’s a compelling argument, but if they leave, the mutants might all disappear and then they’ll never know what happened. And that would make Lia sad. But also: parents, with the power to ground and take away phones.

Lia frowns.

“I’ll give you a ninety-two on your unit test on Friday.”

“All this for a ninety- _two?_ ” All of this deserved a solid A, at _least._

“Anything higher and they’ll suspect you cheated. Learn to _lie_ , Sidner. You can have a ninety-five, Asheleigh— that’s believable. Now git.”

Not sure if she’s relieved, Ashe grabs Lia’s arm and pulls her towards the door. It’s not fast enough to avoid hearing a slightly-too-loud “You’re a _teacher?_ ” from Hank, and Ashe pushes Brook forward so that she won’t stop and investigate.

She stomps extra hard on the frozen snow outside, just to hear the crunching sound. To help her remember her last moments of freedom, and all that. Her phone starts buzzing the moment the pass the gate— she takes it out of her pocket at last, to find twenty text messages. Five missed calls. Five voicemails.

It’s eight o’clock.

“So where do you want me to tell them I found you?” Brook asks. Ashe turns to Lia, but Lia is frowning at the hole Magneto made in the iron bars. “Lia’s dad is driving around town looking, so it’ll have to be somewhere out of sight. Polar-bear swim in the reservoir on a dare? Though you're too dry for that. Maybe I should _throw_ you in the reservoir first."

“Tell them whatever,” Lia says, still looking at the gate. It’s her _I_ _’m trying not to be upset_ voice, but Ashe isn’t sure whether she and Brook are the intended recipients. She wishes Brook hadn’t shown up so that they could have walked home, and actually _talked,_ but, this is the best they’re getting, apparently.

Brook unlocks her car. “Lia, you coming? Where’s your stuff?”

“We left our bags at school. I think I want to walk.”

What? “Are you sure?” Ashe asks. “It’s, like, ten degrees out and you just got, um…” she doesn’t want to say _the powers and possibly life sucked out of you,_ but, like, that happened.

“Yeah.” Lia smiles. It’s probably supposed to be reassuring, but it looks more strained than anything else. “You can tell my parents I’ll be home in twenty. I just need…” she doesn’t say what she needs, leaving Ashe to fill in the blanks. A walk? A chance to be alone in her head? A chance to be alone without Ashe breathing down her neck?

But Lia’s just gone through something, so Ashe is going to do whatever she needs. She should probably make a point of not seeming clingy, now that Lia knows, so that she won't get weirded out. “Yeah, alright. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

Lia trudges off down the street. She doesn’t give Ashe a hug goodbye.

Ashe gets into the Pontiac.

“Is she okay?” Brook asks. “Are _you_ okay? Is it all over?”

Is it?

Charles Xavier, whatever his final form ends up being, is back with his family. They’ve solved the Mystery of the Graymalkin House. Lia still doesn’t have control over her powers— unless Charles told her something that she hasn’t shared with Ashe, but she knows people who might be able to help. Mystique knows what MRO Bill knows about Ellie, and she’ll be able to do more than Ashe could have.

Everything handed off. Everything’s fine. Ashe can go back to her life.

Or something.

“Let’s just go home,” she says

* * *

_Learn to lie._ That’s not exactly the problem is it?

She told herself she’d explain everything to her parents once they solved the house, and they had. Or once she has resources, and now she will— Charles isn’t going to go far from Cerebro, at least for a little bit. She could wait until they’re sure Charles is going to be his own person again, she could wait until the mutants have a plan, she could wait—

 _What do I_ _…_ she catches the thought halfway, because there’s no one there to answer anymore.

Charles’s memories no longer feel real to her: the ones she still has feel like something she saw in a movie, and she’ll never know which ones she lost. She’s alone in her head, but that's how everyone is.

Except telepaths.They're even lonelier.

Charles was never going to be able to tell her how to do this, anyway.

Her powers grow the more she walks, and are back entirely by the time she turns onto her block. Almost directly inverse to how the rest of her is feeling: hopefully there are leftovers at home. Or else she's gonna eat the entire Costco bag of goldfish she has stashed in her room.

She walks slowly up the drive, looking at the Menorah in the window instead of the worry on the ground. They either let the candles burn down already, or they were waiting for her to light it.

Okay.

She opens the door.

Her mother is pacing the living room, anxiety all over the place. She stares at Lia for a full second before she grabs her phone, jabbing at the screen.

“Where have you _been?_ ”

All the words Lia had thought of are gone. “Out.”

“I’ll tell you father to stop looking for you— do you have any idea—”

Of course she does. Lia ignores her, walking up the stairs, fully planning to fling herself into her room eat goldfish and wait for her dad to come talk to her, but halfway down the hall she stops in front of a different door.

Hanna had been mobile almost to the end: she’d never agreed to moving onto the first floor. Her room is still there, still almost unchanged, and Lia steps inside. 

She’s not the first one this week. Not even the first one today. Her mother’s loss is pooled at the foot of the bed, and Lia sits in it carefully, without checking to see what she’s adding. One hand on her locket, the other hand on the bedspread, she looks around.

Here are her grandmother’s books, with 1950s-style bindings that a young Lia had been convinced contained all the secrets in the world, just on the basis of their age. Two photo albums, starting in the early fifties. The precious pre-war photos are under Lia’s feet, tucked away with Hanna’s passport, five thousand dollars in cash, some extra clothing, and Lia’s birth certificate. She feels the edge of the bag with her toe, wondering if she should start her own. Just in case.

“I did all of this wrong,” she says quietly, to whatever traces of Hanna may still exist in this room.

She’s not on Graymalkin Lane, she’s not in the hospital, she’s not even _here—_

Lia slides the bag out from under the bed, careful to touch it as little as possible. There are clothes on top: UnderArmor brand long-underwear, a coat, socks. The cash in the coat pocket. Not even her mother has been through this— there’s no trace of anything recent.

She sets the coat aside, and— there. Two small plastic cutting boards, rubber-banded together in a gallon-sized ziplock. Lia’s about to touch it when she sees the mark at the top.

Love. Sadness. Hope.

Swallowing, careful not to cover the spots that Hanna left, Lia opens the bag and takes the cutting boards out.

She’s seen the photos in there before: she’d been nine or ten, maybe, when Hanna had shown them to her. There's Hannah’s mother and father, in their wedding photo. Then her brothers, who had both been killed for trying to sabotage a train. Her sister, who Hanna had found again in Warsaw. She’d died in Florida right around the time Lia was born.

The only trails are on the edges: Hanna had held these pictures carefully, the last time she touched them. Braced them between two fingers so as not to smudge them. Did she know that this was the last time? The marks can’t be more than a few months old.

Lia flips past the picture of Great Aunt Shayna, and stops.

It used to be the last photo.

It’s not, anymore.

There are Lia’s parents in a tiny hospital room, holding a bundle that Lia assumes is her. There’s Hanna and Lia’s mom in Times Square, pointing at something out of frame. And there’s Lia’s school photo from eighth grade, awkward smile and braces in front of a blue background, and she can’t tell what shirt she’s wearing because there’s a big blot of Hanna’s love covering most of the bottom half, as if she’d brushed it with the heel of her hand.

_Oh God oh God oh God._

She’d known. She’d known her grandma loved her, but she’s hadn’t realized until now how much she needed to see it. To have a memory after the figure that Charles had pulled from her mind, truthful and accusing— or the last few times she’d seen the real Hanna, half out of her mind—

And there it is, carefully preserved.

Half afraid that Hanna’s emotions will fade the longer they’re exposed to the air, Lia puts the photos back on the bed and reaches for the cutting boards.

This is when her parents find her.

“What,” her dad says, looking at the stuff spread across the bed. “What are you— where have—”

Her mom yanks the coat away and starts rolling it back up, leaving her anger and grief all over it. “I don’t know where you got the idea that it’s acceptable to just disappear for hours without answering your phone, without telling us— the Grants had no idea where you were _either,_ I don’t know _what_ you girls have been up to but it’s time you start _explaining yourself._ ” She pauses, eyes landing on the photos, not yet covered. “What have you—”

“Don’t touch them!” Lia moves before she can think about it, throwing out her arm to block her mother’s hand.

She can’t get grief on these, too.

“ _What—_ _”_

“Stop it!” she’d wanted them to ask her, she’s been wanting them to ask for months, and now that they are she can’t. She can’t. “Just— stop asking me _questions._ ”

Her mother takes a deep breath, which is what comes before a shouting-at of truly epic proportions, and Lia moves so that she’s standing between her and the items on the bed.

“I’ll tell you,” she says, trying to stall it off. “Just. Just don’t ask questions.”

Her dad catches her mom by the shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. They’re both looking at Lia, waiting for an answer, and she can’t give them the one they want— certainly she can’t tell them about Charles and Erik and Rogue and Hank and Logan, hiding a mile away. And this could backfire, this could backfire terribly—

“Start at the beginning,” her dad says, and she’s sure they’re expecting a story about drugs or boys or _girls_ and instead this might ruin their lives.

But it’s not like she can hide forever.

It’s not like she doesn’t want them to know.

“The beginning.” Right. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, knowing the next time she looks in a mirror, she’s going to look like a stress-raccoon. “When Grandma was in the hospital— the last, the last couple days, remember when she started hallucinating?” Of course they remember. “I tried to go closer, to her, you know, to reassure her, and she grabbed my arm. And when I pulled away, she had… left a mark. It was—” she has to look at them. She can’t look at them. This would be easier if they were in the car, all facing forwards, but she settles on staring at her father’s hand on her mother’s shoulder. There’s concern leaking out between his fingers. “Her fear. I could see it on my arm, and I tried to wipe it off, but then it just got covered up with my own. And then you and the nurses came running in, and I could see their steps…”

“What are you talking about?” her dad asks slowly. Carefully.

“I can see when Mom’s left sad handprints on the takeout boxes, I know Mom sat right here and grieved earlier today and I can see Brook’s excitement on her video-game consoles and I can’t read my phone screen anymore if I’ve been holding it in my hand—” god, she _needs to stop crying,_ “and I can’t read my homework when I get too stressed because my stress gets _all over it_ and if you guys walked out of the room right now I could follow your footprints around town.” Crying is disgusting. She rubs her nose with her coat sleeve, and that’s disgusting too.

Her mom pulls away from her dad, pacing back and forth along the long side of the bed. “So you’re saying—”

“I’m a mutant.” Lia has to sniffle really dramatically to get the next glob of boogers to stay in her nose. “Uh, surprise?”

They’re surprised. Shock and fear and no small level of horror, and thank God she hadn’t said anything when Charles was in her head— maybe she should have gotten Rogue to touch her again, so that she’d only see what they were feeling once they’d calmed down. If they ever calm down.

“Okay,” her mom says. “Okay okay okay, are you sure?”

That's a question. “Yes.”

 _“_ You’re not, you know, just need glasses—”

“Very sure.”

 _“A_ nd you’ve known since— you’ve known since _September?_ _”_

“Yep.”

Her dad sits down. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything? We asked so many times—”

It's not as simple as _answering._ “ _When?_ I didn’t realize what was happening, at first, and then there was the funeral, and everyone was _sad_ all the time, and you’d have—” Lia points at the footprints. “I didn’t want to see _that_. And then Ellie got taken away and I didn’t want to be next—”

“But you’re not _dangerous,_ ” he says. “Your— mutation— it’s not dangerous. Is it?”

 _Of course that_ _’s what they’re worried about._ The thought is in Erik’s voice. “Mutants are all dangerous, don’t you read the news?” She stands, leaving agitated footprints of her own. “MRO Bill doesn’t know where Ellie is. Ellie’s _parents_ don’t know where Ellie is, or what’s happening to her, the government has done terrible things to mutants, and— so you can’t tell _anyone._ You have to promise you won’t tell.”

“Okay.” He lifts his hands. “Not telling.” _Right now,_ his tone says, because they probably think she’s hysterical and paranoid.

“Where have you been?” Her mom is still pacing, breathing very heavily through her nose. “How does this relate to where you’ve been disappearing to? We’re not idiots, we noticed a distinct lack of shopping on Saturday.”

They’re going to be so angry when they realize how much else she’s been hiding. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why—”

“It’s not my secret,” she says. “We— I was trying to get… help. We went to find some other mutants and I can’t tell you who or where because it’s not safe and I’m _sorry,_ I am, but I got fucking _interrogated_ by a man determined to sniff out even a whiff of mutation so that he could hand us over to prison camps or labs like the one on Alcatraz and I swear to _God_ I am not exaggerating.”

But that’s not the part her mom is stuck on. “We?”

“Me and Ashe. And... Brook. We told her so that she’d drive us.”

“So it’s dangerous to know— don’t make that face at me, I _know_ it’s dangerous— but both Grant girls know, and so do a bunch of mutants who you won’t identify?” 

“It’s fine.” It’s probably fine. “I know their names, too. It’s, uh, more dangerous for them than for me.”

They both stare at her.

They’re probably seeing the rest of her life go up in flames. The rest of _their_ lives, because this isn’t what they signed up for. And she wants to say she’s sorry, but she’s not, because she can see her grandma’s love on a photograph and her mother’s worry in her footsteps and she and Ashe helped bring a man back from the _dead._

It’s magnificent.

“I am sorry for lying, though,” she adds, because she is. Maybe if she’d manifested somewhere else, some other time—

If she’d done that, the house would have been empty. Charles’s ghosts would never have appeared.

She needs them both to stop looking at her like that.

“Okay,” her mom says. “Right. Right. Well, we need to… I need to think about... we need to figure out how to get you through high school, I suppose.”

Lia nods. “Yeah.”

“I suppose there are no guidance counselors for this.”

“Well.” Mrs. Crown’s going to have to come to class to give her the A she promised, although now that Lia thinks about it, Mystique is by nature a chronic liar. She might be in Guatemala by Friday. “Sort of. Maybe.”

“Your secret mutants.”

“Yeah.” Lia wipes her nose again, and her sleeve is so gross now. Just so gross. She’s going to have to put the whole coat in the wash, and hope she doesn’t maim it somehow.

“Right,” her dad says. “Well. This sounds like a great thing to figure out over break.” Lia’s expecting him to go hyperventilate in a corner somewhere, but instead he opens his arms, and Lia is burying her snot-covered nose in his shoulder before she’s processed the decision to do so. His hands are only touching her jacket, but her whole cheek is going to be marked now. “Anything else you want to drop on us, while we’re here?”

 _Ashe is in love with me and I might want to kiss her a little bit._ “Not right now, no.” She can feel her mom’s hand on her shoulder.

“Wanna come light the candles?”

Lia turns a little so she can look at her mom as well. “It’s it way too late?”

A shrug. “Who’s watching?”

Hopefully no one.

What’s happening in Mystique’s house right now? Are they just sitting around, watching Charles grow? Making plans? Was Erik better at remembering the date than Lia was, or is he even worse?

“Alright,” Lia says, and sits up.

They go downstairs, and leave the photos on the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a couple days rereading everything to make sure my timelines were correct, and fixing small continuity errors. A word of advice: if you ever write characters in high school, write out their schedule, even if you think it will never be relevant. Then you'll never do things like forget which classes your characters have before lunch. Other advice: count the days to make sure it's still Hanukkah before you write the draft, because unfortunately, back in 2018, linear time was still a thing.
> 
> Been weighing the pros and cons of doing an epilogue, so there may be two chapters after this: I haven't decided if I want to go that way yet, so I'm leaving the chapter count as is for now.


	19. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She loves the ballet more than she hates the city: she watches Swan Lake once a week, loves the women in tea-coaster tutu skirts spinning and spinning, the way they form lines and look like they’re running through each other, the four who hold hands, making their arms cross like the type of a fence.
> 
> They’d had something on the stage that rippled, like waves, so Siegfried could roll about and look like he was drowning. Her mom thought she’d be upset, because this is the one where they die, instead of the version they have at home where Siegfried runs around with von Rothbart’s wing, but Asheleigh doesn’t mind, because they got to go and hang out in the sun, and that looks like a fun time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, I realize this is three weeks late-- I had to stop and write a much angstier cherik fic, don't @ me, and I have increased the chapter count. Again. I'm not sorry.) 
> 
> Also: A Lot has happened in the world since I posted the last chapter. I hope you guys are doing okay, and are able to keep yourselves safe from both viral and uniformed threats.

On Tuesday, for the first time in living memory, Mrs. Crown isn’t at school.

The substitute gives them a study hour for their upcoming test, and Ashe spends it glaring at her textbook and wondering if Mystique has skipped town. Probably not. Right? She’s probably watching Charles grow— and how is that going, is he sprouting limbs yet? That’d be so _weird—_ or… or something. Ashe would go to her house and check, just to know what’s happening, except she’s Super Grounded.

Brook had in fact told their parents she’d found Lia and Ashe by the reservoir, seeing who could hold their feet in the freezing water the longest. She hadn’t mentioned any drugs, but Ashe thinks her parents suspect it anyway. Which. Fine. Whatever. Ashe wants to at least _try_ weed before she’s grounded under Suspicion Of Consumption, but _life’s not fair,_ et cetera. 

She could have sworn MRO Bill was watching her extra closely during passing period, so it’s probably safer for her parents to assume drugs than anything else.

“He thinks he has a nose for sniffing out mutants or something,” Lia says during lunch. With the sub in Mrs. Crown’s room and the others full of people, they’ve taken refuge outside. The up side is that nobody else is out there: the down side is that no one else is out there because it’s _fucking freezing._ Ashe is afraid of touching the metal bench with bare hands in case her fingers get stuck.

She takes a bite of sandwich. “He’s an idiot.”

“Yeah.” Sigh. “No. He’s not even _stupid._ He’s just… been convinced of things that are stupid. Which is almost worse.”

Ashe isn’t sure she sees the difference. “Is it weird, to know that much about him?” _Is it weird, to know that much about_ me?

“Yeah,” Lia says. “But also… not. He’s still very abstract, in some ways.” She cups her hands around her mouth and breathes out, trying to warm her face. “Not as weird as my _parents,_ Ashe, _oh my god._ Some things you can’t unlearn.”

“Yeah?”

“To repeat would make them real.” It’s hard to tell if her shiver is theatrical or just a reality of it being ass-freezingly cold out. Then, in a voice so casual it’s suspicious, “I told them about being a mutant.”

Letting Brook in on the secret felt like a new era. This is another one. Parents with their noses in things, messing everything up. How is that going to work? “How’d they take it?”

“Alright, I think. They were worried I was _dangerous._ And I’m still grounded. But it was… I think it was good. Or will be good. I don’t know yet.”

It’s good that Ashe’s gloves are covering her hands. Though Lia might be able to read an aura off her face, now; she’s still not quite clear on how that works, or if it’s all the time.

“I think my dad’s gearing up for a catastrophe, and my mom is trying to act like everything’s normal, so it’s nice that they’re mixing up the roles a bit. This morning they kept apologizing for touching things, and _then_ they feel bad about apologizing, so that’ll be… something for everyone to get used to.”

Ashe swallows her last bite of sandwich, sticking the saran wrap in her pocket instead of going all the way to the trash can. “Well. It’s always an adjustment to realize you don’t have any more secrets.” She shrugs, trying to project an air of nonchalance— but Lia looks devastated, and she tries to backpedal. “But people adjust! Especially when they, you know… care about you. Normal changes pretty quickly. I mean, this time last week we were trying to think of how to get to Nate’s house. And now…” it’s not _normal,_ now, but it’s starting to be. “Anyway,” she adds, “at least now your parents will go along with our excuses if _my_ parents ask them about it.”

“I guess.” That doesn’t seem to make Lia feel better, either. “But that doesn’t seem fair. You still lying to your parents when I’m not… well, I’m _omitting,_ but I _told_ them I was omitting.”

“Lia,” Ashe says gently. “I’ve been lying to my parents for a _lot_ longer than you have.” It hadn’t even occurred to her that being honest with parents was something a child might aspire to.

Maybe there’s something really fascinating about Lia’s mitten, and that’s why she’s staring at it so carefully. Or maybe she’s trying to figure out the best way to get out of this conversation.

It was dumb to say anything about it. She tries to think of a subject change, but for a second she can barely think of anything else happening in the world. _So how bout that school basketball game neither of us watched because we were too busy breaking the law?_

“I’m sorry.”

Oh, nope nope nope nope. Where’s a killer robot when you need one? “Don’t be,” Ashe says. “Not your problem. We could just never talk about it again—”

“No, I mean, I feel like I… should have noticed.”

Shit.

Ashe leans her head back against the cement wall of the school. Her hat does not provide much of a cushion. “I really hoped you wouldn’t, actually. I mean. I’d have told you someday. Maybe.” Probably not. Maybe when Ashe had moved on and could pass it off as a joke— _I was like, stupid in love with you in high school, didn’t you notice, L O L, what whacky times, anyway have you met my new Super Hot Girlfriend—_ but the fantasy ends there because she’s having a problem imagining dating someone else.

 _God,_ Ashe is lame.

If there’s a telepath in the vicinity they’re probably really entertained, or really embarrassed on Ashe’s behalf. 

“You should have. I, um, didn’t really know it was an option?”

“How could you not—”

Lia waves a hand. “No, like, I understood the _concept,_ I just didn’t _think_ about it. Like… I thought all the crushes people claimed they had in elementary school were fake.” She proceeds to explain her theory of All Crushes Are Just Friendship, which is absolutely _not_ what most people consider friendship, and Ashe is torn between laughing and floating away on a little bubble of hope.

“You thought that was normal?” It’s almost enviable. Ashe has always been aware of her abnormalities. She’s coddled them and feared them and used them to form the framework of a personality.

Maybe she’d have been different, if she’d kept whatever Charles had yoinked from her mind. Maybe she’ll be different when he puts it back.

“I guess. That wasn’t like, the _point_ of that story, though.”

“So,” Ashe says carefully, in case Lia isn’t saying what it sounds like she may or may not be saying. “You…” No, wait, she can’t do this. It’s _embarrassing._ There are so many ways it could go wrong. For some reason, she thinks of the first time they’d seen Charles and Erik. Flirting in the library. Everything in the world against them, but they’d been able to be _sure._ It’s good that Lia’s not a mind-reader anymore, but it might make things easier now.

Giving up, Ashe takes off a glove, pressing her thumb gently to the back of Lia’s mitten. Both a question and a declaration.

Lia flips her hand over, and catches Ashe’s fingers.

Ashe should have known Lia was a moron, since she’s walked around with Ashe’s feelings on her palms countless and never said anything.

She wants to ask what they’re supposed to do now— they’ve spent days trying to get a chance to talk, and now it’s here, and she finds she can’t say anything else at all. So she squeezes Lia’s fingers, and waits for the bell to ring.

* * *

The terms of Lia’s grounding include taking an Uber to her mom’s office after school, and studying for her unit tests in direct line of sight. The terms of Ashe’s allow her to hang out at the Grind Stone, as long as she’s back in the school building before Brook is done with band practice.

She takes another look at the picture of Ororo, and wonders if she’ll get to meet her. Probably not, right? But her powers sound insanely cool. And helpful. She could have called in a snow day whenever she needed one. Did they get snow days, if they lived at school? 

“How’s it going?” Luna asks, without looking up from her computer. Ashe catches the reflection of a solitaire game in the shiny side of the espresso machine.

“Good,” Ashe says. Maybe Lia was onto something, talking to… adults. She might not have all the answers she’d been looking for, but she has a start. She has parents that know, and older mutants to ask. Ashe had wanted Luna to just look at her and understand, but Luna is not a mutant.

Ashe is not a mutant.

“I sort of asked a girl out,” she says. Because Lia _found out_ and Brook just sort of knew and she’s never had to tell anyone any of this before. Never gotten to. “Kind of.”

It’s not like she’s going to go to her parents, but. Baby steps.

Luna smiles. “She say yes?”

“Kind of.”

“Gotta start somewhere, I suppose,” Luna slides a chocolate chip cookie across the counter. “Here. On the house.”

Ashe realizes she's grinning like a moron, and then decides she doesn't care.

* * *

_They’re in the car._

_Asheleigh’s face is pressed against the side of her car seat, the buckle digging into her cheek. Next to her, Brook is snoring._

_It’s a long drive, from the City._

_She hates New York. Everything is loud, there, and fast, and the wind is cold. But it was worth it, for the ballet. She loves the ballet more than she hates the city: she watches_ Swan Lake _once a week, loves the women in tea-coaster tutu skirts spinning and spinning, the way they form lines and look like they’re running through each other, the four who hold hands, making their arms cross like the type of a fence._

_They’d had something on the stage that rippled, like waves, so Siegfried could roll about and look like he was drowning. Her mom thought she’d be upset, because this is the one where they die, instead of the version they have at home where Siegfried runs around with von Rothbart’s wing, but Asheleigh doesn’t mind, because they got to go and hang out in the sun, and that looks like a fun time._

_They’re almost home. Soon she’ll wake Brook up, and they’ll go to bed, and Asheleigh will imagine being a swan in a tea-coaster tutu of her own, flapping her arms with the others, but her mom is saying “you made the wrong turn,” and then her dad says a word doesn’t know, and her mom says, “George!” and her dad says another thing, but this time he’s leaning forward._

_There are a lot of trucks on the road, and people gathering outside a gate. It’s a gate to a school, Asheleigh’s mom has said, but not the school Asheleigh will go to. This is a school for older kids. Asheleigh likes looking at it, because sometimes there’s something interesting happening. There are snowstorms that happen only over this house, or cool lights and things moving, because some people have the power to move things like Mary Poppins. Asheleigh hopes she learns to do that someday. Her mom says that some people do and some people don’t, but that both are okay._

_But the men don’t look like they’re here for a snowstorm or colored lights. They look like the toy soldiers Taylyr has._

_Her dad stops the car. “What the hell?” he asks, and it must be serious because Brook said that once and Mom got real mad._

_“Who are they?” Asheleigh asks, and both her parents move but don’t look at her._

_One of the men outside points at their car and starts walking towards it, and he’s holding something that looks a lot like a toy gun but he’d have no reason to carry a toy gun, maybe it’s a real gun, and she wonders if he’s going to shoot them, and she doesn’t want to get shot and she doesn’t want her parents to get shot because that is what happened to Batman and she thinks of von Rothbart all in black and starts to cry._

_“It’s okay,” Mom says, reaching back around the seat and patting Asheleigh’s foot. “He’s just going to tell us what’s going on.”_

_The man makes a gesture with his finger, and Dad opens the window a crack. “I just need a place to turn around,” he says. “Everything okay?”_

_He doesn’t sound as calm as he normally does._

_“Nothing to worry about,” the man says. “It’s just—”_

_And then he stops talking, and starts walking backwards instead. He’s twitching, and Mom jumps when he drops the gun but nothing happens. He just falls backwards, his hands over his ears, and he’s_ screaming, _and Asheleigh has never heard a grown-up scream. The others are falling too, up ahead, like Siegfried drowning on stage, arms flying, and Asheleigh looks around because von Rothbart is real, then, he’s followed them from the city and he must be standing on the fence, flapping his wings— he’s going to get them too, and she starts to cry harder because she doesn’t want to drown, and her mom moves like she’s going to get out of the car and “No!” Asheleigh yells, close to panic. “No, he’ll get you if you leave!”_

_“Your mom just wants to check and see if they’re okay,” Dad says, because he doesn’t understand._

_The men are still twitching, and maybe they’re going to die, but Asheleigh doesn’t know how to ask because her parents seem to get more upset, and Brook sort of twitches and says “ssssshhh!” but that’s when the men stop moving, and Dad still isn’t turning the car around._

_“Should I—” he starts._

_“Maybe there_ is _something out there,” Mom says. “A mutant, or—”_

_But then the men get up. And get back into their truck. More and more men walking back through the gate, all dressed the same._

“Jesus, _” Dad says. “Do you think the students—?”_

_And mom says, “Sssh!”_

_These men don’t look like students. They just get into the trucks and there are more trucks than Ashe had been able to see in the dark, turning on their lights and swinging around, and Ashe starts to ask where they’re going. She opens her mouth, and…_

_“George?” Mom says. “Any reason we’re stalled here?”_

_“Might be a problem with the car,” Dad says, and pulls into someone’s driveway to turn them around. It’s an odd time of day to be driving, but Asheleigh is too sleepy to wonder about it._

_Later, when her parents are tucking her into bed, Asheleigh sees a crayon drawing of a swan stuck to her wall. She doesn’t remember when she made it, but it’s weird. She doesn’t like birds very much._

_She’ll throw it away in the morning, she thinks, falling asleep,_ and that is when Ashe wakes up, eyes on that same spot on the wall.

There’s a calendar there, now. It’s got a different cat for every month of the year, and she hasn’t flipped the pages since July.

Without taking her eyes off of it, she grabs her phone, and tells Siri to call Lia.

Ringing. Ringing—

“Morning,” Lia mumbles, sleepy, happy, and Ashe realizes she must have thought she was calling for a different reason and that’s great, actually, but first she has to tell her that—

“Charles is awake.”

* * *

The thing about being grounded over Christmas break, when her parents still have to work, is that they cannot actually enforce the grounding.

If they’d thought of it, they could facetime her every half hour to make sure she’s still home, but while Ashe doesn’t know _exactly_ what her parents do at work all day she’s pretty sure that they don’t have time to do that. So it’s with cautious confidence that she puts on her boots and hurries down the street, stopping to lurk under Jon’s office window where he won’t be able to see her.

He might not have noticed either way: she can hear increasingly agitated German coming from inside, although all German sounds a little agitated to her ear.

“Behind you,” Lia says, and Ashe almost shrieks.

_“Jesus!”_

“I went out the back, I don’t think he’ll look for me for a little bit.” Lia tugs Ashe backwards down the road, until they’re safely out of sight. One of the neighbors could still rat them out, but at least now they have a head start.

They don’t say anything for the first block, and Ashe isn’t sure if it’s awkward, but Lia’s hand is still very close to the edge of her coat so Ashe mostly thinks about that, until—

“So the memories are back?”

“Yeah.” It’s clearer than any other memory she has from that age, and Ashe recounts it in as much detail as she can. “It’s weird, though, right? I mean, my parents still remember that I liked ballet.”

“Maybe it was because you were little?” Lia suggests. “And if you really thought Von… Whatshisface…”

“Rothbart,” Ashe says, not sure why she feels indignant. 

_“Rothbart_ was the one doing it, then maybe he and by extension the entire ballet got… pulled out of your head with the memory of the soldiers. Like dominoes.”

“I guess.” It might not be dominoes as much as a daisy chain. Maybe she’s lucky she didn’t lose more— but, how does she quantify how much loss it really was? Maybe there’s an alternate universe where she became a ballerina. Maybe the story would have mattered to her, later. And her parents— her parents had known that Xavier’s was there, and they’d been alright with it. They’d told Ashe that being a mutant was okay, which they must have learned by living near so many. Maybe if they’d kept that open-mindedness—

Maybe other things would have been different.

Or maybe they’d have changed their tune away as soon as any civil unrest popped up.

If alternate universes are real, Ashe can’t travel to them. So she’ll never know.

* * *

Charles is sitting alone on the porch, with a blanket over his lap and a thermos held in both hands. His hat was clearly borrowed from Mrs. Crown’s wardrobe, and for some reason it reminds Lia of that photo Ashe found of Charles in a lobster costume. There’s something contradictory in the scuff marks his feet have left on the porch. Apprehension, maybe? Peace?

It’s weird to see him. Not a blur faced memory, or a voice in the back of her head. He’s _real,_ flesh and blood and bone, and Lia is torn between hugging him and starting to cry, though she’s not sure why she wants to do either of those things.

He doesn’t seem surprised to see them, but then, his psychic range clearly reaches from here to Ashe’s house. He’d have known when they left, if he’d been looking for it. Brook once told Lia and Ashe about this form of psychological torture where you were in jail, and there was a rotating guard tower, but you couldn’t tell when it was pointed at you: so you may or may not be observed at any time, but you wouldn’t know when, so you’d have to assume you were always under surveillance. It occurs to her that that might be what living in the same town as Charles Xavier might be like— and then she immediately feels bad for thinking it, because she knows how Charles would have felt hearing it, if he’d been in her head.

But if he’s picking up her thoughts now, he gives no indication of it. Which may validate her theory. 

“Good morning,” he says.

The only chair out there is the one he’s sitting in— which makes sense, Mrs. Crown lives alone— and so Lia digs her toe between the slats she can sit on the railing, which is harder to do in snow boots than it is in sneakers. Ashe follows a second later, close enough that Lia can just barely feel the warmth of her shoulder through their jackets.

“Good morning,” Ashe replies, looking to Lia like Lia is supposed to know what to say before she turns back to Charles. “Uh, are everyone’s memories back?”

Charles shakes his head. “I can’t reach everyone without Cerebro. And some people… don’t need to be reminded.”

“Like my parents?”

A frown. “No, the feds. Do you want your parents to know? If they remember the attack, then—”

“No,” Ashe says quickly, her fingers digging into the back of Lia’s hand, too many emotions to parse without being obvious about it. “No, I was just… wondering. Thanks for, uh, returning mine.”

“Of course.”

“So how are you feeling?” Lia asks, after an awkward three seconds in which Ashe stares back at the sidewalk like she’s considering making a break for it. “Did your brain, er, grow back right?”

 _Did your brain grow back right? What the fuck kind of question is that._ She knows Charles, quite possibly better than she’ll ever know anyone else, but it’s hard to remember that looking at him. Hard to see the slightly neurotic literature snob and not the school principal who can divert armies.

Hard to remember how alien the world looks to him right now.

The front door bangs open, and Ashe flinches back, nearly falling off the rail. Mystique emerges, bright blue and wearing at least three winter coats, with Erik trailing close behind her with two floating chairs and wild joy in his wake.

“Was his brain ever right?” Mystique asks, and Lia would like the floor to please swallow her up.

“Thank you, Mystique,” Charles says, with great dignity. “My brain is fine. Were you going to get the children some chairs?”

Erik frowns. “They’re sitting just fine.”

 _“_ On the _railing,_ you can’t just let guests—”

“We’re fine,” Ashe says, and Lia nods as well because if this tentative reconciliation falls apart she doesn’t want to have had anything to do with it.

Mystique sits, making a show of tilting her chair back. “It was easier to be sympathetic towards you when you were dead and I didn’t remember how fussy you were.”

“By all means, I could stop making Holly-Next-Door think there’s nobody sitting on your porch right now. I’m sure you’d love to talk about your blue guests.”

“Ugh.”

Nodding as though a matter has been settled, Charles sips from his thermos and looks out at the street like he’s surveying his lands. Ashe looks from Erik and Mystique to Lia, and Lia shrugs, not having an answer.

“Hank and Logan are both snoring inside,” Erik explains. “It’s enough to drive anybody out of their house. Listen.”

“Erik, I really don’t think—”

He waves his hand in Charles’s direction. “ _Listen!”_

They all sit very quietly, and sure enough, a distant rumble can be heard from the general direction of the sofa. Lia bites the inside of her cheek to try and keep herself from grinning.

“Are they both on the couch?”

Mystique looks at Lia like she’s insane. “Neither of them are on the couch, they wouldn’t fit. They’re on piles of blankets. Like puppies. I don’t know where you expect me to put all your new people, Charles. I do not run a hostel.”

“So you’ve been saying,” Charles says, and Lia can’t help but notice a distinct lack of packing going on. Mystique isn’t going to trust anyone here, but maybe she’s glad for the company.

Twelve years is a long time to have no friends.

Something else clicks. “New people?” Lia asks. “Are you going to open up the school again?” she tries not to sound too hopeful, and tries not to notice the faint anxiety around Ashe’s hands. The adults all look at each other, and maybe it was a stupid question—

“The new people are friends who just found out I’m back. Reopening the school… hasn’t come up.”

"Do you want to?"

“It’s a good house,” Erik says. “Defensible. Well-equipped. But. Power suppression collars have gotten more advanced. They’ve been expanding powers of Sentinel Services, and there are rumors the robots are coming back. The last president didn’t allow it, but this one…”

The robot that almost killed them all had been practically antique. What could the new ones do?

Lia has to resist the urge to look up and down the street, and tries not to think of Ashe, falling, and the certainty that they were all going to die. She hasn't even trusted her dad's roomba lately.

“It might be safer for us to scatter,” Mystique finishes. “Continue operating in smaller groups. It’d be easier of we had a plane.”

Charles ignores the plane comment, eyebrows going up. “We?”

She shrugs, glancing at Lia, and then past her to where Mrs. Dunwittie is shoveling her driveway and paying no mind to the blue woman or terrorist on the porch. “It’s probably time to get back into the fight.” She traces a line of careful hope and caution across the porch with her toe. “I could use some allies.”

Erik’s face doesn’t change, but there’s cautious hope around him as well.

Charles beams.

Inside, a very loud snore is cut off, and something thuds. At the same time, a car pulls up out front— Lia expects it to be one of the neighbors, but then a familiar voice says, “can you grab the juice?”

She turns around to see… Mrs. Crown, with a bag of groceries in each hand. A second later another woman emerges, managing to hold three bags and a carton of Tropicana.

“Ororo,” Ashe whispers, breath warm on Lia's ear. 

Her hair is much shorter than it was in the memories. It looks badass.

Mrs. Crown stomps up on the porch towards the door, footprints more amused than annoyed, and Mystique reaches out. “My scone?” 

“With what hands?” Mrs. Crown holds out the bag, and Mystique rummages in it for a second before removing a paper-wrapped pastry.

“Did you follow my—”

“Yes, yes,” The teacher ripples for a moment before resolving into Rogue. “One strawberry scone, a week’s groceries, _I’m Getting By, Brenda, How Bout Yourself,_ no more small talk. Your reputation is safe.” She shoves the door open with her shoulder.

Inside, they can just hear Logan saying “did you get the Frosted Flakes?”

Ororo is lingering on the porch. Watching Charles. There’s still enough awe around her that Lia’s surprised she left Charles long enough to go on the grocery mission at all. Then again, the others have probably been seen around town already. Except Hank. Poor Hank. 

“They didn’t see you two together, right?” Mystique asks, and Ororo blinks.

“Me? I’m driving my sons home from for Christmas. You wouldn’t be _lieve_ how much college athletes eat. Are you going to help me unpack, or are you going to sit here on the porch like the elderly?”

“We are elderly,” Erik says. “Throw me a bagel?”

“Absolutely not.” Ororo continues into the house, and not fifteen seconds later, emerges with a bagel.

She gives it to Charles.

“Ex _cuse_ me."

“You’re Lia and Asheleigh, right?” Ororo says.

Ashe says something like “gah”, and Lia nods.

“Do either of you want some food?”

Lia looks at Erik, unsure if this is a test. He looks back, serene, and as though he has never killed anyone in his life and is certainly not planning anything now.

“Sure?” Ashe says.

Ororo opens the door again. “Logan! Will you get the girls some bagels?”

What is happening right now?

Logan comes out of the house a minute later, in a t-shirt and jeans and no winter clothes whatsoever, with two bagels in each hand and six more speared on metal claws. Lia had seen them in Charles’s memories, but that’s not the same as seeing them in person: and Ashe didn’t know about them at all. Her shock clear even without Lia’s powers.

Do those claws get stuck in ribcages? Has he ever punched someone in the ribcage?

She's sure that he has.

He holds his first out as if for a fist bump. “Sesame and everything.”

Lia takes an everything. Ashe takes one of each, her elbow bumping against Lia's when she moves.

Trying to enter the house again, Logan stops suddenly in the door frame. Muscles bulge in his neck, and Mystique snickers.

“Here.” Ashe’s sesame bagel lands in Erik’s lap, and he releases Logan, looking at it in surprise.

It’s only the third time that Lia has been in a place with more mutants than humans, and by far the best.

She thinks she could get used to it. 

* * *

There aren’t many people out and about as they walk home, and Lia is more aware than ever of Ashe’s presence at her side.

They haven’t _talked_ about this. Their days have gone on as normal, eating together at lunch— outside, because Mystique had called in all week, and the sub had handed out their unit test with the promise that Mrs. Crown is the one who would be grading them— and maybe sitting a little closer, but they’ve always sat close, they’ve always held hands, but now Lia keeps _thinking_ about it and she’d be worrying about Ashe backing out if there weren’t more heart emojis in her text messages lately.

And if she couldn’t see Ashe’s feelings.

That helps.

They’re both walking more slowly than normal, and both realize it at the same time: Lia catches Ashe’s eye, and smiles, but she doesn’t know what to do after that.

“I’m sorry about the school,” Ashe says abruptly. “I know you wanted…”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t want to talk about it, because it’s not going to happen, and it's stupid to have hoped for it. Because it’s not _safe_ , according to Erik, and she doesn’t want to think about that either— not suppression collars or murderous robots that could be used against her. She wants to be back on the porch, watching a weird mutant family tease each other. She wants to be on the sidewalk, here, with Ashe, right now, when the terrible things in the future haven’t happened yet.

They both come to a stop, as if by mutual agreement, about ten feet short of Lia’s house. Far enough to not be visible from the windows, close enough that the return to their respective groundings is close and inevitable.

Possibly for the rest of break, if they’re caught now.

Ah, fuck it.

This isn’t scarier than knocking on the Guptas’ front door.

(It’s a little scarier.)

“Would kissing be weird?” Lia asks, watching Ashe’s hand carefully. Panic, excitement, hope, interest, and fear is her best guess of that emotional soup.

“No,” Ashe says. “I don’t think so?”

“Cool,” Lia says, and goes for it.

(She thinks: Hmm, interesting.

She thinks: I’m having my first kiss.

She thinks: I am _kissing Ashe._

She thinks: is this the right amount of time for kisses to last?)

“I don’t think it was weird,” Ashe decides. “Did you think it was weird?”

Lia considers this carefully. It is, objectively, kind of weird, but, also, rather nice. Definitely worth exploring. “Good weird,” she decides. “Try that again?”

“Good call.”

When Lia finally creeps in the back door of her house, it’s to meet her father’s unimpressed eyebrow. He’s standing in the kitchen, tossing an orange from hand to hand, and she can see relief and fear trailing after it.

“Mutant things?” he asks, casual.

“Yep.”

“Ashe things?”

Did one of the neighbors tell him?

“Yeah.”

“Mm.” He stops throwing the orange, and digs a fingernail under the peel. “You’re double grounded. I don’t know what double-grounding is, but I’m going to think of something.”

“Let me know,” she says, ducking past him to run to the bathroom, anxious to see what Ashe’s feelings look like on her lips.

There are, she hopes, many good things in the future as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, which was supposed to be the last, turned out to be much longer than expected, and the last third of it really needed to be its own chapter: I kept trying to shove it into this one in the name of staying true to past promises, and that was not working. So, in a few days, we will finally get Mystique POV. And then an epilogue.


	20. Epilogue One, December 2018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” Mystique says, because Magneto’s got a look on his face like he’s feeling _sentimental._ The two of them are going to drive her up the wall with just how happy they are to be in each others’ presence—making jokes, curling up together at night, who knows what else. Ugh. It’s reminiscent of the sixties, and parts of the eighties, but she bets they’ll be at each other’s throats within a month.

They don’t do Christmas dinner.

In fact, they pointedly do _not_ Christmas dinner. Which looks like: Mystique, Charles and Magneto sitting around a table eating Chinese take-out while Storm and Wolverine go on a beer run at the only open grocery store three towns over and Hank and Rogue sleep off some unholy concoction that Wolverine had presented earlier. It is not festive, in any way.

Even if someone has given Charles a hat.

He’s using an old wheelchair that Hank had found it in the school’s storage, and tried his best to divest of rust. The result is wheels that turn, but also make an alarming squeaking noise.

It’s a shame he didn’t have that twenty years ago: things would have been easier if they could have heard him coming.

“So,” Mystique says, because Magneto’s got a look on his face like he’s feeling _sentimental._ The two of them are going to drive her up the wall with just how happy they are to be in each others’ presence—making jokes, curling up together at night, who knows what else. Ugh. It’s reminiscent of the sixties, and parts of the eighties, but she bets they’ll be at each other’s throats within a month.

(“Two months,” Wolverine had said.

“Six weeks,” Rogue had said.

“Ten dollars?” Mystique had offered, and they’d all shaken on it. Camaraderie is the first step to infiltration, after all.)

“So?” Charles repeats, chasing a pot-sticker around his bowl with chopsticks.

“Is it Wolverine and Rogue, or Wolverine and Storm, or all three of them?”

“It’s Logan and Storm,” Magneto says, picking up a potsticker with far more skill than Charles had, and pointedly ignoring how Charles is gaping at him.

“ _What?_ _”_

“Damn, I always thought Storm had _taste.”_

Magneto gives Mystique a rather pointed side-eye. “Pot, kettle, if I recall correctly.”

How dare he. “I didn’t want _Wolverine._ _”_ Not any more than anyone attracted to stupid, buff mutants would be. “I wanted to _win._ _”_

“Hang on,” Charles says. “How did I not know about this?”

If she thinks about Alkali Lake, _he_ might think about Alkali lake, and nobody wants to do that. “Mental repression?” And she’s not going to go about imagining it _now,_ so she picks up a blueprint stolen off of Bill Peterson’s computer, and pretends to study it closely.

Bill and Charles had had a very productive chat as Bill drove to the airport.

“I can have him decide to transfer, after that,” Charles had said, but Mystique had shaken her head.

“Have him keep on. I’ve already trained him to stay away from me: he’s predictable, and he’s bad at his job. If we send him away, they might hire someone _competent._ ”

For some reason, everyone had taken issue with the first part of the statement. All _you_ _’re not retiring, Mystique?_ from Hank and _developed a taste for the doilies, then?_ from Wolverine and assessing looks from Magneto and Charles that she did not care for. It’s not like it’s personal preference: she has to stay until the end of the year, because Victoria Crown would never skip out between semesters.

Well. She had. But only when a free, permanent vacation was dangled in front of her.

“You’re going to want someone in town to keep an eye out, and I already have the perfect cover,” she’d said, instead of strangling everyone with her feet. “Once summer comes…” she doesn’t know what she’ll do once summer comes. She’s _liked_ it here, despite herself, and she hates that she does. She likes the kids, and their weird lives, and how they’re all afraid of her. She likes sleeping in the same bed every night. She likes going to the grocery store on Friday afternoons and exchanging two words with Brenda at the register. After spending years around Charles and Magneto’s speechmaking, it’s the perfect amount of interaction.

But this isn’t her life. She’s helped a few mutants here, but she still wasn’t able to save them, and there are more out there that need her. More than one high school, more than one town. Now that she has allies again, now that she has access to resources, staying still would be a betrayal.

Because they’re going to need her.

Magneto is doing well, for ninety, but he’s showing his age in a way he didn’t twelve years ago. Charles is probably still eighty, and maybe the burst of Logan’s power will give him a boost, but it hadn’t fixed his spinal injury so Mystique isn’t counting on it. Would never count on him, in general.

As for her—well, by Hank’s estimate back when they met, she’s still got half her life to live. 

Without them.

“Last thing I knew, it was Logan and _Jean,_ ” Charles is saying. “Should I be worried that he seems to be going through my students?”

“He and Scott had a very sad, drunken make-out session once,” Magneto says helpfully. “He told me when we were all very stoned.” _That_ is a story that Mystique absolutely wants to hear, but she can’t ask for it when Charles is making that expression.

“Dear Lord. I’m going to have to have a word with that man. No—I can’t, he just risked his life for me, and they’re all adults, but _honestly._ ”

“You’re just jealous he’s more successful than you,” she says, more to egg him on than out of actual belief.

Charles’s brand-new skin turns an excellent shade. “ _Excuse_ me? Those are my students—I practically raised them— and anyway, he’s _not_ more successful than me.”

Magneto grins. “Sneaking out from some extra curriculars, were you?”

“As you very well know.”

“But there’s only one of me. Are there scads of others I don’t know about?”

“We are over eighty years old,” Charles says. “This conversation is beneath us.”

“Wolverine is around a hundred and fifty.” Or at least, she’d once found some files to that effect.

“But he can only remember about forty years of that. Tell me, Mystique, does that make him too old for you, or too young for you?”

Mystique does some quick calculations. “Charles has kissed Magneto, and _I’ve_ kissed Magneto, and also Logan, who kissed Ororo, Jean and Scott, which means that’s you’re only four people removed, Charles—”

“You know what?” he says. “You’re… cancelled.”

“I’m _what?”_

“It’s what the kids are saying these days.” 

He puts on such a wise face that it’s easy to forget that most of his knowledge of the last decade comes from a high school freshman. “But what does it _mean?_ ”

“It means… you’ve said something improper, are no longer considered a citizen in good standing, and I’ll be forced to unfollow you on Instagram.”

Mystique can’t actually remember what Instagram is. “I’ve never been a citizen in good standing.” The only birth certificate she can remember having was a blank piece of paper Charles tricked people into _thinking_ was a birth certificate. And, of course, she’s done lots of crimes. And is planning some more.

She’ll be out of practice, but it’ll be easy. Magneto’s been focused mainly on finding mutants in trouble and getting them to safety, but he knows as well as she does that Canada and Mexico are barely any better. The two of them once fought a war when they were living in a cave and only had three minions: with the X-Men and Cerebro, they can do better than running away.

But first, she has kids to find.

“…hardly the most scandalous pairing, in your absence,” Magneto is saying, warming to gossip. “Let’s see. First, Rogue and Bobby broke up, and then Bobby got together with Kitty, _but_ eventually he realized, or admitted, that… well, I’m sure you know.”

“I _am_ a telepath,” Charles says.

“He and Warren are up to _some_ thing, but it might just be an operation they don’t trust me to know about. Hard to tell. And I’m getting suspicious about Kitty and Xi’an.”

“You gossip like my students,” Mystique informs him, trying not to notice that he hasn’t said a word about Hank.

“It’s an important part of battle planning,” he shoots back, appearing entirely serious. “Who can work together, who is going to compromise the mission, which exes are going to abandon everything to save each other in a fit of romantic heroism…”

“ _And_ you love gossip.”

“I like to be informed,” he says loftily.

They used to sit in caves or ramshackle buildings and make fun of the Scott and Jean drama of the week, for lack of anything better to do or anyone more important to fight. Once Mystique had turned into Scott so she could better imitate his distraught _Jeaaaaaaaaaaan, Nooooooooooooooooooooo!,_ and then Jean’s subsequent reaction ( _Leave me here, Scott, just continue the mission!)_ — _honestly,_ Magneto had barely given her a paper cut _—_ and they’d both practically fallen off their rocks in hysterics. 

“Ah, youth,” she’d said. “To be young and silly again.”

“We were never like that,” Magneto had claimed, which was such a blatant lie that it had set them both off again.

The office secretaries aren’t nearly as good for a laugh. Or a fight to the death.

“Good thing Charles is back, then.” Mystique picks up another dumpling, properly, because she’s a skilled adult who actually knows how to use chopsticks. “To keep you _informed_.” Until they have a fight over something stupid and insurmountable and go their separate ways to sulk. 

Charles makes a scandalized noise, and nearly gets soy sauce on a doily. “I do not use my powers for _gossip._ ”

“Mm, not what Lia said.”

“Well, I could hardly help it _then._ ”

“Who’re we gossiping about?” Rogue asks bleerily, stumbling into the kitchen. “Ooooh, food.”

Magneto hands her a carton of bao and she falls on it with absolutely no finesse.

What have they been _eating_ , lately?

They’re going to have to do something about that, if Mystique is going to join them. Well. Work in proximity to them. She’s gotten used to regular meals, and she’s not sure she’s ready to give that up.

“We aren’t gossiping,” Charles says. “Erik was just giving us an update.”

“An update?” Her voice is suddenly wary. “On what?”

“Oh, just St— wait, you’ve been _robbing banks?_ Erik, you’re letting them rob— we had to _specifically_ tell Congress that Kitty wasn’t robbing banks— _Erik._ ”

Magneto and Rogue look at each other, both frozen mid-chew. Rogue’s come ablong way from being a sniffley teenager, and Mystique realizes she might respect her a little bit.

Maybe it was a good thing they didn’t kill her back then.

Of course, if their plan had been a success, they wouldn’t be in the shit they are now. 

Magneto swallows quickly. “We needed money. And it’s not as though they were caught.”

 _“Erik.”_ Charles does not, Mystique notes, sound angry. It’s not the voice he used when the Brotherhood had kidnapped humans— it’s more like the one he used when he found Mystique smoking at Oxford.

Magneto smiles back, and Charles sighs.

Maybe she’ll update her bet to two and a half months. 

* * *

On the last day of 2018, she hands a transfer order over to… _Jeremy Hertz,_ Charles reminds her, and she smiles another man’s smile and greets him by name.

“We’ll need a blood test, of course,” Hertz says. “Nothing invasive. If you can just prick your finger and then press it down here.”

“Of course.” She puts her hand in her pocket. “Does someone monitor that security camera at all hours? I’ve heard of mutants who could interfere with its signal.”

He turns to look at the camera in question, and by the time he looks back, Mystique is pressing a bloody fingerprint against the scanner.

It beeps, a light on the side turning green.

“Very good, sir.”

“Do you have a wipe? I’m afraid I poked harder than I meant to. Bit of a mess.”

He hands one over, and doesn’t say anything as Mystique carefully wipes her finger, and then the scanner itself, so that no traces of Asheleigh Grant’s DNA are left behind.

“Here’s your controller for the suppression collars. Keep a hold on that, and they won’t give you any trouble.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” she says. “Get that door sometime today, please.”

It’s a heavy wooden door—proof they know at least a little of what Magneto has been up to—and Hertz unlocks it with an iris scanner and number pad. The door swings out instead of sliding, revealing the room a little at a time.

She notices the cold first, a burst of air that makes her wish she were wearing a real jacket, instead of just her skin. The she sees the beds—rickety wooden frames, bolted to the cement floor, and she wasn’t sure that she could still do this, but she can still do this. The mutants are waiting for her— teenagers, all of them, with tired eyes and dirty hands. Collars beep around their necks, and Mystique wants to crush Hertz’s face with her feet.

He’s still trotting along at her heels. “Of course, sir. There’s a guard unit waiting outside to assist you, and ready to counter any attack. I’ve heard that there are rogue mutants in the area, and we take no chances here, as you can see.”

No chances at all. It’s not chance that one of New England’s freak rainstorms is about to hit, turning the guards’ eyes to the ground. Or that all the Sentinel vehicles in the area are going to find themselves unable to start.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she says, turning to where Ellie McClean is scowling at her from a top bunk. Letting her eyes flash gold, Mystique winks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bad: I am currently stuck in Idaho due to car trouble that required hitchhiking and a ride in a tow truck with very generous Idaho citizens who were not wearing masks, so I'm gonna have to quarantine when I get home until enough time has passed that a covid test would be accurate. 
> 
> the good: that means I'm going to have time to finish the second epilogue! So it should not be another month between updates.


	21. Epilogue Two: Spring, 2023

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most people are looking up, these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during Days of Future Past. It doesn't have to be canon to the rest of the story if you don't want it to be, but I couldn't stop thinking about how the original timeline ends, so.... *jazz hands*

Every time she puts her foot down, it hurts, and she thinks, _I can_ _’t take another step._

And then she does it again.

There’s nothing left to do but walk, because she _can_ walk. Because she’s alive, and Ellie and Anaaya are alive, leaving thick trails of grief and shock in their wake.

Because somewhere behind them—

No.

Lia looks forward instead, at the streets of a town with a forgettable name. They’re covered in the usual: the annoyances and small joys of daily life, masking fear. Always fear. Eternal, and often ignored.

The few people out give them a quick once-over, checking for horns or tails or unusual skin, but mostly, their eyes are on the sky.

Most people are looking up, these days.

 _Charles, if you_ _’re listening,_ she thinks reflexively, but she doesn’t have a way to finish the sentence. It’s been weeks since he answered, anyway.

“Any sign?” Anaaya asks. It’s the first thing she’s said since they left the woods.

“I’m looking.” If she relaxes her eyes a bit, she can see the fliers and graffiti covering the walls: missing persons posters, old petitions, and advertisements for a lifestyle long since abandoned. Nothing that will help them, so she looks at the feelings, down one street and then the next, and—

“Maybe she left.”

Lia doesn’t tell Ellie to shut up, even though she wants to. Talking is hard. A few hours ago, Shawn might have—

“Found her.” A long line across the broken window of a Domino’s, bent at one end to indicate direction.

The line isn’t as miserable as what the other two have been leaving behind. Scared, nervous, but there’s no grief. Not yet.

There’s another mark on the post office at the end of the block, and one on a fence at the end of the next. They’re leading out of town, and Lia hopes it’s not much farther to walk, because her feet really _fucking hurt._

She readjusts her backpack, tugging one of the straps free from where it had gotten caught on her holster.

Right.

Okay.

By the sixth block, they catch a tangle of footprints that she recognizes. One arrogant and angry, one excited and afraid, one wounded and frightened. A side injury: he’d given that away when he’d leaned up against a tree to rest.

They’ve been following those trails for two days.

(“Do I look like a goddamn mutant to you?” Ashe had said. “Mutants are the reason my family’s dead. If I knew how, I’d go out in the woods and hunt them down myself.”)

The footsteps end about a mile from the edge of town, at a house that stands alone in a field. An old jackleg fence still surrounds most of it, but there’s a ten-foot gap with burned edges on the south side. Normal fire, or Sentinel blast? The house doesn’t look damaged, but if there was only one mutant trying to jump the fence, it wouldn’t have to have been.

Whatever happened, it was long enough ago for the grass to grow back. But Lia checks the sky anyway.

Flat and blue, as far as the eye can see.

“Do you need to clear the house?” Anaaya asks, and Lia shakes her head.

“There’s no one else in there.” All but one of the trails lead outward, and those ones aren’t coming back.

So she climbs the steps, pushes open the peeling door, and goes inside.

It’s clearly been occupied by a group for a while. The front door opens into a living room covered in worry, relaxation, anger, and discarded Ramen wrappers. A stack of Rubbermaid bins is braced precariously against one wall— _please be supplies_ — and there’s even the sound of running water in the kitchen, because Ashe is standing by the grimy sink, filling a yellow Minion water bottle.

For a second, it’s all Lia can do not to collapse onto her. Three days is a long time.

But Ashe is staring at them, her smile fading, relief changing to a sharp fear.

“Where—”

There’s a chair. A kitchen table and a chair. Someone put them here. Someone had family dinners here. So many that emotion is baked into the cracks in the wood. Then there were Purifiers, and now there’s them, and Lia sits down.

“He didn’t…” Ellie doesn’t finish the sentence, instead dropping her bag on the table. She focuses very hard on unzipping it, on pulling out three of their four collars. Lia takes hers, running her finger along the metal. Leaving her grief on it for later.

Erik could shred these into nothing, if he were here. “Key?”

“Yeah.” Ellie fumbles with the remote. There’s a beep, and the light on the collar turns red. Another beep, and it’s off. “Wait, hang on.” Double-beep and it clicks open. “There we go.”

Lia puts the collar around her own neck, and the room turns sharp and hard and crystal clear. And like every time, she thinks, _what if it doesn_ _’t come off?_

Ashe is still looking at her. She makes the same expression whenever Lia puts the collar on, and Lia still doesn’t know what it is. But Ashe catches her hand when she reaches back, and her fingers are still warm, and she’s still here, alive.

“We tracked them into the woods,” she says, because someone is going to have to explain. “They found the campsite where you told them it would be, and we attacked when they weren’t looking—” and it should have worked. Nobody should have been killed, not even the Purifiers.

“It was my fault.”

Ellie grabs Anaaya’s shoulder. “It was _not_ your fault.”

“I was supposed to knock them out, and—”

“And one of them dodged, and so Shawn set him on fire,” Lia says. _Blasted_ him with fire, really. It had been the man with the injured side, and he’d reacted how they should have expected him to react, shooting into the threat. The shot passed through the fire, and Shawn never saw it coming. “And the Purifier got a lucky shot.”

Ashe’s fingers are digging hard into Lia’s palm. “Did the fire kill him?”

No. He’d been alive. Scorched, but breathing. Until Ellie threw him into the trees, glowing brighter blue than Lia had ever seen her. And one of his buddies had gotten up— the one whose anger had been fueled by excitement, the one who _enjoyed_ the hunt, and Lia had seen it, and Lia had fired. Because her powers could lead her on a chase, but they can’t end it.

There are human ways to do that.

“None of them are coming back,” Lia says. “We can stay here for a few days.”

“Stay h—” Anaaya looks around. “This was their _house?_ _”_

“It’s well-supplied. I doubled back after they left. If it all went well, I thought we could raid the place before they returned, and if they were the ones who made it back…” Ashe looks from Anaaya to Lia’s gun, and lets the rest of them decide how she was going to end the sentence. “Did you… did you at least get the…?”

“Yep.” Ellie holds up a round, flat battery. “Whole pack of ‘em. They’ll keep the collars charged for a few months, at least.”

“And if we keep dying at this rate, they’ll last even longer.”

It’s not that Anaaya’s wrong. It’s just thinking about it makes Lia want to cry, and if she starts she might never stop, because yesterday Shawn was here and now he’s not and she’s got his favorite issue of _Green Lantern_ tucked into the pocket of her backpack where she keeps Hanna’s family photos and a deck of cards Mystique had given her.

“Don’t talk like that,” Ellie snaps, and Lia can’t tell _exactly_ how close to a breakdown she is, but it’s probably close. It might be a good thing they’re all powered down right now, because Ellie’s breakdowns often involve things going flying. “We aren’t going to die.”

“I’m just—”

“Charles has a plan,” Ashe says, though she sounds very far away. “Charles has a plan.”

_And now would be a great time for you to tell us what it is._

He could be dead too, but Lia doesn’t believe it. He’s survived the impossible over and over again. Charles isn’t dead, and Charles has a plan, because otherwise…

“Bit late, for a plan.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ellie sticks her hand out, palm down. “Oaths. C’mon.”

One by one, they put their hands on top of hers. Anaaya first, then the other two, and Lia takes the chance to press her thumb against Ashe’s.

“I will live to spit on the president’s grave,” they all chant, slightly out of time with one another.

(“If we can’t live for hope,” Nate had said, a few months before, “we can live out of spite. I’m not dying until he does.”)

(Nate had been unable to keep that promise.)

“Right.” Ashe clears her throat. “There’s some ramen packets and a bag of rice in the second bin over there. I ate earlier, so I’ll go keep watch.” She squeezes past them out of the kitchen with short, quick steps. The sole of her sneaker flaps where it’s broken free of the heel.

Should Lia go after her? What she really wants to do is open all the bins and look at the food, or possibly, go find a side room and cry for about a week, but that’s more or less what Ashe is doing and Ashe never actually wants to be alone. She spent a day rubbing elbows with shitheads and then two days alone wondering if the others were going to make it back—now this. At least Lia’s had the walk to process.

“Go ahead,” Ellie says quietly. “We’ll take stock.”

“Thanks.”

Lia ducks out of the kitchen and through the living room. It looks grimier without tracks covering it up: the carpet is molding, the couch’s pattern is hideous, and she’d almost rather see Ashe’s worry covering the last feelings the Purifiers had left behind. She feels like she’s stumbling through the dark, like this.

Ashe is lying flat on her back in the yard, flannel balled up under her head. Lia approaches slowly, making sure her footsteps are loud enough to be heard. She still has her backpack on— gets anxious if she’s more than three feet from it at any given time— so she takes it off now, using it as a pillow.

Ashe isn’t crying. But her breathing is very careful.

“Even when you guys weren’t here,” she says, “I couldn’t sleep without watching for Sentinels.”

“You slept out here?”

“Mm.”

The ground isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but the grass is going to make her itch eventually. It seems like allergies shouldn’t still exist, at the end of the world. “If you want, I can keep watch tonight,” Lia offers, really hoping Ashe doesn’t take her up on it. “If you want to sleep inside.” The entire point of the collar is that most Sentinels won’t register them as a threat. But they also reveal them as mutants to every human they pass, and if they happened upon one of the Sentinel Guard groups, looking for collars a sign of camp escapees—

Well.

They haven’t yet.

But Anaaya’s right. It’s only a matter of time.

“It’s alright.” Ashe’s voice is hoarse. “I keep… I didn’t even know Shawn that well, really. But he knew Brook, and I keep thinking…”

Yeah. Lia reaches out to where Ashe’s hand is flat on the ground. An offer. “I know.”

She didn’t expect she’d miss _mourning_ as much as she does. There are things one does for the dead, and they don’t involve abandoning the body in the woods, in case their use of powers had caught any Sentinel radar. At least when Nate’s injuries finally did him in, they’d been somewhere relatively safe. They hadn’t had any supplies for a proper Hindu funeral, but there had been a few dandelions, and a chipped novelty mug for Anaaya to break. Then Shawn had incinerated the body, and they’d all run gagging from the smell.

Funerals with relatives and sitting shiva for her grandma feels like something that happened to another person.

Ashe finally takes Lia’s hand, squeezing it hard.

She’s never asked if Ashe regretted leaving Salem Center with her. There wasn’t time to regret it, not with scorched earth behind them and no chance to turn back. But she must have wondered, since then, what her life would be like if she’d never befriended Lia in the eighth grade. If George and Brook would still be alive.

(There’s a chance Connie is still out there. Maybe Lia’s mom, as well— her dad was doomed from the start, carrying the X-gene, but the last time Lia had seen her mother she was running for the reservoir, and Lia has never worked up the courage to ask Charles if she made it. Because if she did, Lia will want to find her and that will put her in danger, and if not— if not, what good would that knowledge do her? Better to have the hope. One more reason to turn her collar on, when the Sentinels pass overhead—)

(Pass over—)

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Late March? Maybe April.” Ashe rolls onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow. Her ponytail is full of grass. “Should I?”

“I think it’s almost Passover. Or maybe it just ended.” She hadn’t thought about it until now, and definitely hasn’t been timing the length of the days, but surely they’re past the equinox. When was the last full moon? Wasn’t there one when they were hiding out in that storm shelter? It probably doesn’t matter. It’s not like she can celebrate— although mumbling half-remembered prayers while Sentinels drift overhead is rather in the spirit of the thing. Last year, they’d had the family Seder at Bill and Ruth’s, and she’d brought Ashe, and Kelsey had put the Haggadah underneath a magazine and then forgotten so they’d had to spend half an hour tearing the house apart trying to find it.

She’d emailed Charles and Erik a meme with a picture of the Pillsbury Dough Boy captioned _he has risen!_ next to a Pillsbury Dough-Boy shaped piece of matzah captioned _he has not._

Erik had replied: “I hope your family is well.”

Charles had replied: “LOLOLOLOL.”

“Guess it’s Easter then, too,” Ashe says. “There’s a computer in there, if we want to find out the exact date. Might even have internet.”

“Best leave it off, just in case.” Ashe turns nineteen in late April. If they’re still alive, Lia will have to think of something to do. “Next year…”

“We’ll have a table, and food, and all the wine. So much wine.”

“Or we might be dead.”

Ashe squeezes her hand tighter. “Don’t say that. Next year in Jerusalem, right?”

It’s a good thing they ran in the same direction, Lia thinks, because she’s pretty sure that alone, they’d both be dead by now. “Right.”

Above them, white clouds drift by.

* * *

Ashe wakes the next morning to a damp feeling on her ear. It takes a second to process where she is— at her parents’ house, with unpacked bags at the foot of the bed— and another second to recognize that the damp feeling is somebody’s tongue.

“Eew!” she hisses, lashing outward with her elbow. Snickering, Lia rolls away, using a pillow to defend herself. “What was that?”

“I can’t get up without climbing over you, and it’s ten o’clock! It’s time to wake up!”

“Some of us are _jet-lagged._ _”_

“Well that’s what you get—” Lia dodges a wiggling fingertip aimed for her chin, and the motion nearly takes out Ashe’s Yuanyuan Tan poster— “for going to another time zone just to learn how to snoop.”

“One day you’re going to declare a major, and then it’s all over for you.”

Ashe is about to bring her elbows back into play when there’s a sharp knock at the door, and Lia squeaks, diving under the covers.

“Yeah?”

Her mother leans into the room, and Ashe sits up slightly, pulling her duvet with her to try and make the Lia-shaped lump less obvious.

“I thought I heard voices.”

“I was sending talking emojis,” Ashe says quickly.

“Right. Well, your dad is making waffles, if you want to get up.”

Whole family in the kitchen. Not ideal for sneaking one’s girlfriend out after an unsanctioned sleepover. “Okay. I’ll make it downstairs eventually.” She yawns, for effect. “Brain’s still off-kilter, you know.”

“Alright.” Her mom smiles, moves like she’s going to leave, and Ashe is just about to relax when she stops. “He’s doubled the recipe, so there are enough waffles for Liliana if she’d like to come downstairs as well.”

Busted.

“Thanks, Connie,” Lia says, her voice muffled by blanket.

“You’re very welcome, dear.”

And then she finally does go away, leaving the bedroom door wide open. Ashe flops back down onto her pillow. “Well.”

Lia emerges. The static from the blanket is making her hair stick out in all directions, and Ashe pats it back down. Then she untangles the bit that’s gotten tangled in the chain of Hanna’s locket, because they haven’t been in the same room since January and Ashe will take any excuse to touch her.

“At least she’s amused, not mad,” Lia says, squinting at the hallway. “Think she’ll tell my parents?” 

“Er, did you think they weren’t going to notice that you weren’t home?”

“I told them I was going to go visit the school today. If they noticed I was gone early, I’d have said I went for breakfast. Erik would probably have covered for me,” she adds, at Ashe’s dubious expression.

“Is he in town?” As far as Ashe can tell, the leadership at Xavier’s changes on a semi-regular basis: Professor Xavier comes in and out of retirement every few years, splitting his time between Westchester and Genosha. Scuttlebutt says that the timing is based on how well he and a Mr. Lehnsherr are getting on at any particular moment, but that doesn’t explain the amount of time Erik spends in Westchester. Come to think of it, maybe it’s not that Erik comes to Westchester with Charles, it’s that Charles goes to Genosha with Erik.

Their marriage is weird.

“Yeah, that’s part of why I gotta visit now— who knows if he’ll still be in town during summer break. You want to come with?”

Ashe visited the school fairly frequently, once Lia started going there part time— especially Junior year, when Lia had decided that she wanted to board like most of the other mutants in town. That lasted about a month before she remembered how much she liked having her own room, and parents, and walls that weren’t a mural of teenage emotions. Nobody there was ever rude to Ashe’s face: Professor Xavier was almost disturbingly welcoming, and even Erik, notorious separatist, was nice enough.

But she’d still been very, very human. “Would that be weird? Don’t you want to see people?”

“We’re only home for eight days, and I want to see you too.” Lia pokes her in the side. “Come onnnn. _Rogue_ will be there.”

Rude. “I’m breaking up with you,” Ashe says, pretending to go back to sleep.

“Pshaw. How else would you get into the mansion to observe Rogue’s lovely visage?”

“Raven would let me in. She likes me.”

“She moved to Genosha with Irene. She’s like, mayor there now, or something.”

“Jean, then.”

There's a pause as Lia considers this. “She’s a telepath, though. Think of the mockery. Face it, babe, you’re stuck with me. Now geddup, or I’ll lick your ear again. Your mom promised me waffles.”

Those do sound nice. However. “Those waffles will come with parental mockery and judgmental eyebrows, you realize.”

"Somehow,” Lia says, “we've survived worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (New Timeline!Charles, probably: okay I read the mind of an alternate universe version of myself from the future, and some of them involved you fighting my pet Sentinel with this human, so you're going to be nice to her.
> 
> New Timeline!Erik, probably: can you unpack that a little more, please)
> 
> A note: The end of DOFP (where Chalres and Jean are at the school in 2023) directly contradicts the ending of Dark Phoenix (when they disperse in the 90s) so I can only imagine that sometime in the intervening years Jean stopped being a firey space bird and Charles came out of retirement. Possibly more than once. Also, if the X-Men can come back to life all over the place then so can Mystique. Because I love her. 
> 
> Anyway... here we are! I started writing this in 2018, so it's weird to be finishing it now, considering everything that's happened (personally and globally) since then. Thank you to those who have followed along with this journey, which started off as "wouldn't it be funny if Charles haunted his own house?" and turned into "let's all remember the mortifying ordeal of being in high school" and "grieving the elderly: a complicated and confusing mess." Shout out to those who have left comments as I went along: I would not have gotten chapters out as regularly without you. And shout out to those of you reading it now, whenever "now" happens to be, who made it through this weirdly niche story that got vastly out of hand. Hearing from you is lovely. 
> 
> As always, stay safe <3 here's hoping we're living in the better timeline.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://runawaymarbles.tumblr.com/)


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